The Miscellany News
Volume CXLVIII | Issue 17
April 7, 2016
Since 1866 | miscellanynews.org
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
President Hill bids farewell in 2017 STEM field minorities given voice via pre-org O Noble Ingram and Jeremy Middleman Editor-in-Chief and Reporter
Kris Weber
Guest Reporter
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en have long dominated the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, often collectively referred to as STEM. In the fall of 2014, biochemistry majors Neila Kline ’16 and Emory Werner ’16 set out to establish a group on campus that would provide a supportive space for women and other identities that have been historically marginalized in STEM fields. They also hoped to increase opportunities
On March 29 President Catherine Bond Hill announced the approaching end of her presidency in 2017. President Hill is the 10th president of Vassar College.
Frosh nabs second UVC award Jamie Anderson Guest Reporter
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Inside this issue
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Empanadas de Viento take FEATURES center stage
Knigge has been a consistent performer for Vassar as well, posting 3.82 points per set, 2.73 kills per set, as well as boasting a hitting percentage of .511 throughout the course of all 29 matches. He was named the United Volleyball Conference’s (UVC) player of the week once, as well as being named the Sports Import/American Volleyball Coaches Association’s (AVCA) National Player of the Week, the first recognition of this kind for Vassar College since 2010. He was awarded these honors for his performance at the season-opening Wildcat Invitational, which was hosted by SUNY Poly. He was also named Co-MVP of the tournament in recognition of his .593 hitting percentage and 40 kills over the course of Vassar’s four matches. Another key to the success of the Brewer Men’s Volleyball team this season has been the consistent play of freshman outside hitter George Diehl. The 6’4” first-year student-athlete was a four-year letter-winner out of Lindbergh High School in St. Louis, MO. Head coach Robert Wolter had nothing but good things to say about the freshman. “[George] is willing to do anything you ask him to do without question. He has the ability to play multiple positions at an extremely high level.” During his time at Lindberg, Diehl See VOLLEYBALL on page 18
15 ARTS
Alan Hagins and Julia Cunningham Assistant Features Editors
“T
ime moves fast in Art 105. 3000 years of human creativity is a lot, but then you blink and Rembrandt is gone.” Sitting across from Professor of Art Molly Nesbit, it is easy to see how students would be drawn towards studying art history. To better support the feedback from students who have gone through the course in the past and to be able to do justice to all of the material the course presents, the Art History Department has been working to change the structure of the Art 105 course
that starts many students on their path towards an undergraduate degree in Art History. Nesbit explained how the discussion arose to restructure Art 105. As she said, “We’ve polled students in the class twice. Once in the fall of 2013, and at the beginning of this semester. This last poll was very interesting to us, because it was clear that the course was not fitting very well into the current campus culture.” Art History is a very dynamic subject. It crosses several disciplines and can be taught from multiple different See ART on page 7
Loeb takes it slow in celebration Patrick Tanella Reporter
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ast weekend, I made the mistake of going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Good Friday. The museum was packed with tourists so we rushed through and attempted to see as much artwork as we could before becoming too annoyed with the mass of people surrounding us. When we had finally finished and left the mu-
seum, I realized that none of the art had left a significant impact on me. Those few seconds we would take to look at a work and maybe take a picture did not leave a lasting impression, which left me disappointed and full of regret. I was near art for hours, but did I really see it? Thankfully, the art world has come up with a new method of looking at works of art. Rather than spending the
average of eight seconds on a work, an event called Slow Art Day encourages people to spend several minutes on a specific piece in order to gain more reflection and clarity. The Coordinator of Public Education and Information at the Loeb, Margaret Vetare, has coordinated the Loeb’s participation in the event for the second year in a row. It all started in 2008 when the See LEOB on page 16
courtesy of FLLAC
he Vassar men’s volleyball team has been having a banner season, notching win after win and consistently ranking in the top 10 in the country. The Brewers will enter postseason play in the United Volleyball Conference this Friday with a current national ranking of eighth. Vassar has compiled an overall record of 23-7, going 7-3 at home, 8-3 away and 8-0 at neutral competition sites, while recording a 4-4 record throughout the course of in-conference competition. The team has had some especially noteworthy wins: over nationally fifth-ranked Nazareth College in five sets, national No. 9 Elmira College in four sets, 11th-ranked Kean University in three sets, as well as most recently against No. 13 nationally-ranked New York University, bringing their head-tohead record for the season to 1-1. A number of players have contributed to the very successful regular season with outstanding performances. Senior right side and captain Reno Kriz has been continuing his successful on-court career for Vassar this season. Playing in all 29 of the Brewers’ matches, he has recorded 4.01 points per set played, 3.41 kills per set, taking his career total for kills over 1,000 in just the fourth match of his senior year. Sophomore middle hitter Matthew
to engage in networking. Women in Science at Vassar College (WSVC) was the result, later changing its name to Women in STEM so as to include students from the Math and Computer Science Departments. “The function of the group is to establish a strong rapport amongst female Vassar students in the sciences,” Kline said, sitting across the table in the Old Bookstore. Werner, in an emailed statement, concurred, saying, “I hope that the club can be a See STEM on page 6
Art history class follows new timeline Ashley Pecorelli/The Miscellany News
n March 29, President Catharine Bond Hill announced her departure from Vassar at the end of the 2016-2017 school year in an all-campus email. “The Board of Trustees will make a more formal public announcement later today, but I wanted to take this opportunity to let our community know in a more personal way of this long-planned transition,” Hill wrote. By the time she steps down, the former economist will have been in office for 11 years. Her presidency will be marked by an emphatic prioritization of financial aid, a transformation of the student body and numerous renovations and expansions including the construction of its new integrated science building, the Bridge for the Laboratory Sciences. Hill’s announcement of her departure, however, has been met with some concern, particularly the worry that her biggest contribution to the College’s financial aid policy, need-blind admissions, will leave with her. “We have accomplished so much with contributions from so many at the college, it feels like the right time to hand over the work to a new president and to continue my work in some new and exciting ways,” Hill wrote. She will be on sabbatical through the fall of 2017, continuing her economics research on access and affordability. “My most recent work is on the impact of income inequality in America on higher education, which I think is a See CAPPY on page 4
For the second year, the Loeb is participating in Slow Art Day. This national celebration encourages museum patrons to contemplate art in a comfortable, safe space. This reflection can be meaningful for art aficionados and beginners alike.
Be aware of Decoda’s traveling bassoonist
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VC baseball hits it out of the park with SPORTS beginning of season
The Miscellany News
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April 7, 2016
Visiting Brussels in aftermath of bombings Jessica Roden JYA Blogger
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he recent bombings in Brussels have jolted me from my carefree study abroad experience and into the world of terror. I know that I am hypocritical for mentioning this attack and not the countless others occurring around the globe, and I hate the media and our society’s priorities for the unequal coverage of each attack, but I am going to talk about Brussels because it is more personal to my experience here. A little over a week before the bombs exploded, I visited Brussels for a weekend trip. My friends and I took a day trip to Bruges on Saturday, and on Sunday we explored different churches and museums in Brussels. We ate our way through the country’s supply of waffles and fries, and I had a fun time freely exploring the
city. A few people mentioned to me that they felt tension when they traveled to Brussels, but I didn’t. I heard of the attack in one of my classes when a classmate blurted out the news right before a test. I checked the news the first chance I had and soon after began to feel physically sick. My feeling of safety in Western Europe was quickly crumbling. I still have a vision of Copenhagen as different from the rest of Europe because it is part of nice, safe Scandinavia, but that could of course change in a second, especially with Denmark’s recent trend toward treating refugees so poorly. My saga with Brussels did not stop there, though. We had a travel break for Easter, and I was planning to go to Amsterdam and Paris with my friends. Thrifty as we were, we decided
to find what we thought would be the cheapest way to get to Amsterdam and to come back from Paris. And where does RyanAir travel to that is near both of these cities? Brussels. The itinerary for my trip was to leave Copenhagen on Thursday (two days after bombing) to fly into Charleroi airport, take a one-hour bus into Brussels Midi station, take a taxi to Brussels North station, and take a two-and-a-half-hour bus into Amsterdam. On Saturday, we would take a train from Amsterdam to Paris, passing right through the heart of Brussels. On Monday, we were to leave Paris via a four hour bus back to Brussels Midi station, take a one hour shuttle to Charleroi airport, and fly back to Copenhagen. Great trip planning. To read more about Jessica’s JYA experience, visit farandaway.miscellanynews.com!
Editors-in-Chief Palak Patel Noble Ingram
Senior Editors Anika Lanser Rhys Johnson
News Eilis Donohue Opinions Nick Barone Emma Jones Humor & Satire Zander Bashaw Arts Connor McIlwain Sports Zach Rippe Photography Sam Pianello Design Sarah Dolan Online Kelsey Quinn Copy Jackson Ingram
Crossword Editors Alycia Beattie York Chen Collin KnoppSchwyn Assistant Features Julia Cunningham Alan Hagins Assistant Sports Winnie Yeates Assistant Design Talya Phelps Charlotte VarcoeWolfson Assistant Copy Claire Baker Assistant Social Media Hannah Nice Web Master Andy Carrera
courtesy of Jessica Roden
The Miscellany News 7
April
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Weekender_ 8
April
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April
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10 April
Sunday
Intersectional Anti-Semitism Workshop
Privilege Campaign III Discussion & Pizza
African Students Union Fashion Show and Dinner
Tennis (W) Seven Sisters Championship
Sound of Music Screening
Lacrosse (W) vs. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
LiNK- CIA Dinner
4:00pm | Prentiss Field | Athletics
6:00pm | CCMPR | LiNK
Relay for Life Kickoff
Rugby (M) vs. Hofstra University 12:00pm | Rugby | Athletics
Woodshed Spring Show
5:00pm | KH Club| RSL
7:00pm | Rocky 200 | FWA
The Cherry Orchard
7:30pm | CDF | Drama Dept.
VC Variety Show
7:30pm | AULA | Class of 2016
James Hamilton Lecture
8:00m | Rocky 301 | PHOCUS
The Food Chain
8:00m | Shiva | Philaletheis
1:00pm | CC 240| Campus Life
5:00pm | Villard Room | Relay for Life
Woodshed Spring Show
7:00pm | Mug | Woodshed Theatre
The Cherry Orchard
7:30pm | CDF | Drama Dept.
The Food Chain
8:00pm |Shiva | Philaletheis
6:00am | Villard Room | African Students Union
7:00pm | Mug | Woodshed Theatre
The Cherry Orchard
7:30pm | CDF | Drama Dept.
Decoda
9:00am | Joss Tennis Courts | Athletics
Family Day
1:30pm | Loeb | The Loeb Art Center
Reporters Amreen Bhasin Ashley Hoyle Jeremy Middleman Sieu Nguyen Sabrina Oh Matt Stein Clark Xu Columnists Jimmy Christon Jillian Elkin Saachi Jain Evelyn Frick Steven Park Penina Remler Sarah Sandler Josh Sherman Patrick Tanella Jesse Horrowitz Photographers Alec Ferretti Ashley Pecorelli Design Christa Haryanto Klara Kaufman Scarlett Neuberger Samana Shrestha Copy Gabriela Calderon Sophie Deixel Steven Park Noah Purdy Elena Schultz Sophie Slater Laila Volpe Rebecca Weir Laura Wigginton
Paper Critique
9:00pm | Rose Parlor | The Misc
8:00pm | Skinner | Music Dept.
The Food Chain
8:00pm |Shiva | Philaletheis
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
CORRECTION POLICY The Miscellany News will only corrections for any misquotes, resentations or factual errors for ticle within the semester it is
accept misrepan arprinted.
April 7, 2016
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ASA lecture urges honest telling of East Asian history Clark Xu Reporter
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Ashley Pecorelli/The Miscellany News
alance of trade, human rights issues, power plays and industrial expansion dominate the current discussion of East Asia. Dr. Akira Iriye, invited by the Asian Students’ Alliance to speak on April 2, takes a different approach, focusing on the implications of World War II and the Cold War in East Asia for the globalized world. Former Treasurer of ASA Kentaro Kaneki ’17 elaborated on this theme, saying, “I’ve been thinking about inviting Dr. Iriye for about two years now. I think he is really different from other speakers invited by ASA, in that he offers a more global and historical perspective by which to think about ourselves.” ASA President Wendy Liu ’17 agreed, “I think Dr. Iriye is unique because his work allows students to connect the dots and think about themselves in a larger, richer narrative.” Iriye’s humanist perspective calls on people of all backgrounds to reflect their histories as shared memory. Showcased in the documentary “Vassar: Through a Chinese Eye,” Iriye’s lecture is already an example of transcultural exchange. Producer Rose Zhang ’19 explained, “Our prospective audiences are those students and parents from China who want to know about liberal arts education. We want to present our true experience here at Vassar.” While Rose presents excerpts of Iriye’s lecture to prospective students in China, Iriye pointed out Vassar’s international students and exchange programs as a paradigm example of social movements that have transformed the world into a closer, globalized society. As he continues his academic career into his ’80s, Iriye’s belief that the past carries insights for future projects in research, policymaking and creative expression has only been strengthened. He began, “When we talk about anything like China, Japan, the United States or the world today, setting up the time frame is very important.” Iriye’s personal experiences, having lived
through the First and Second Sino-Japanese Wars, have made him adamant about the importance of inclusivity and truth in recounting history. “We need to talk about the past because history tends to be distorted, particularly history education. It’s not just Japan, China and many other countries that have official textbooks,” he remarked. “Even in the United States, the government in Washington may not control these writings, but many states do.” President of the Southeast Asian Students’ Alliance (SEASA) Kryzel Bonifacio ’17 recognized the kind of education Iriye described. She reported, “I was born in the Philippines, in Southeast Asia, and that topic was never really a part of the history classes I learned in while I was living there, or even in classes in the United States.” Liu also appreciated Iriye’s acknowledgment of the need for more inclusive history education. She remembered, “In high school, our history classes gave us the standard narrative that Asia is only East Asians or that the Chinese built the railroad, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the Koreans were invaded. But listening to Dr. Iriye’s lecture and coming to college to learn about our histories, the ones that have been erased, from various other perspectives shows us that we are much more than that.” Iriye emphasized that an honest attempt at teaching history is greater than any ideological framework or moral lesson that could be built from the groundwork of history. Drawing a comparison to European history, Iriye argued, “Europeans say that the European Union is a group of shared memory. That’s a normal idea. Unless Chinese, Japanese and Koreans share some sense of the past, there is not community there. And I agree with that; community does mean some kind of shared past, of shared memory.” Iriye suggested that the basis for our globalized society is a profound respect for the humanity shared by each individual. Fostering this respect in the face of conflict requires extensive communication in official
Dr. Akira Iriye spoke at Vassar on April 2 about East Asia and the importance of historical global events to globalized society. His lecture was sponsored by the Asian Students’ Alliance. diplomatic channels, continued growth in the operations of international NGOs and everyday contact between individuals, what Iriye termed transcultural exchange. Professor of Political Science Fubing Su responded, “Transnational connections, particularly people-to-people exchanges, can be a positive force and we should definitely encourage this trend.” Students were impressed by Iriye’s enthusiasm despite the daunting challenge of changing international conceptions of history from the ground up. Kentaro admitted, “Although I don’t see as many reasons as Dr. Iriye does for being optimistic about the near future, in fact I would say that I’m kind of pessimistic, I do believe that being optimistic has its important points. When you are optimistic, it’s harder for someone with extreme and irrational ideas to capture you at
an emotional level and carry you away.” Kryzel agreed, “His optimism was unexpected, in terms of discourse about international relations in the modern day, where everything seems really horrible and really bad.” At the very least, Iriye remained defiant of the prevailing pessimism among his contemporaries and audience. He explained, “People have been telling me that I’m unrealistic. But I believe you have to have a vision for humanity.” The audience was filled with the youthful faces of students and professors who were born during or after the détente of the 1970s. Addressing them, he concluded, “It seems to me that you were born into a much more promising world and your responsibility as human beings is to make sure the world does not go back to the way it was.”
Ravel maintains importance of campaign finance reform Anika Lanser and Rhys Johnson Senior Editors
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Rhys Johnson/The Miscellany News
fter witnessing this year’s presidential race, few deny existing fundamental problems of money and politics. To many, the 2016 campaign has cast a light on the glaring need for campaign finance reform and have brought the issue to national attention. One of the leading figures in the struggle for reform is Commissioner Ann M. Ravel of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), who spoke about the issue in a lecture sponsored by Democracy Matters and the Political Science and International Studies Departments on Monday, April 5. Ravel hails from California, where campaign finance reform promptly became a staple issue of her rising career. She worked as the Chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission beginning in 2011 until transitioning to the FEC in 2013. In her time as Vice Chair and subsequently as Chair in 2014 and 2015, respectively, Ravel primarily worked to regulate the impact of campaign financiers and lobbyists on federal elections and addressed ethics and conflicts of interest regarding those elected to office and public employees. The effort to reform campaign funding, though now an issue at the forefront of the ongoing election cycle, has only recently entered the progressive activist agenda. Democracy Matters Co-President Sophie Gonsalves-Brown ’16 explained in an emailed statement, “The media, candidates for President and other elected office, and the public are talking about money in politics to an unprecedented degree.” Although the issue is well-documented, it is new to many social justice campaigns. As Ravel noted, “84 percent of Americans of all political parties say that money has too much influence in our political system, but many of those think nothing can be done about it...” The figure suggests that awareness of the role that super PACs and dark money play in elections is as widespread as the problem itself. Many, however, remain disillusioned with the system and pessimistic towards potential solutions. Ravel also discussed the degree to which these issues plague the campaign finance sector. “Unfortunately we’re seeing in our election today that something like 40 percent of the contributions that are given,
On April 5, Commissioner Ann M. Ravel of the Federal Election Commission spoke on campus about the need for campaign finance reform, given the state of affairs in Washington today. it’s estimated, are dark money. That is they are not being disclosed, so nobody knows who the source of those contributions is,” Ravel explained. This is just one aspect of a larger condition in which the FEC is unable to regulate campaign donations. Ravel said, “We’re in a situation now at the Commission where for any issue that has any major consequence in the election today, we are unable to enforce the law at all, because there is a group of commissioners who act as a block and they can always impede any activity on any of these significant issues.” As Ravel pointed out, this nationwide phenomenon itself implicitly contributes to the severity of the issue, as political participation rests at the heart of the potential to create change. “What’s happening is that the disaffection is becoming exacerbated because people aren’t voting,” she remarked. “People aren’t contributing, and so the ability to change the dynamic is more problematic if that happens. And also...it is then more diffi-
cult for the poor, middle income or minorities or women to get elected to office, because there are so few people who can afford to run for office.” Democracy Matters Co-President Sam Beckenhauer ’18 agreed that campaign finance reform may indeed be a necessary building block towards progress in other social causes. “I hope that campaign finance can serve as an umbrella under which all of the issues we care about can be resolved. Our voices as students have been muted due to the corrosive influence of money in politics,” he wrote in an emailed statement. For Beckenhauer, Ravel’s experience at the FEC is important to understand the ways in which money in politics impacts whose voices are heard. He continued, “Structurally changing how government operates will lead to different policy results. The wealthy understand this best. That is why they lobby and donate to get the results they want.” This election cycle, organizations with chapters at colleges and universities nationwide, like
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Democracy Matters, have helped to propel the issue into the national spotlight. Executive Director of Democracy Matters Joan Mandle ’66 commented, “This is a critical time for our movement to reach out to the general public and demonstrate that there is hope that change can occur.” Mandle went on to express satisfaction at the growth of such movements here on campus. “[Democracy Matters] at Vassar is raising consciousness about the damaging effects of big private money in politics and mobilizing students to join with others in the growing movement to create a financing system for campaigns that can create a democracy of, by and for the people, not the big funders.” According to Ravel, signs of progress can already be seen, as proposals with newfound potential to address campaign finance reform begin to gain traction. “There are a few pieces of legislation that Congress can vote on that will do a great deal to regulate campaign donations and to increase transparency in where candidates and elected officials’ money comes from,” Gonsalves-Brown explained. “Bills like the Government for the People Act (introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD)) and the Fair Elections Now Act (sponsored by Sen. Durbin (D-IL)) would go a long way towards improving the system.” In fact, the campaign finance reform movement has also manifested more locally in the work Democracy Matters is currently doing for the surrounding City of Poughkeepsie. Beckenhauer explained, “Democracy Matters has been in contact with the Poughkeepsie City Council to pass legislation on the amount private contractors can donate and receive contracts in return.” Whether or not the budding campaign finance reform movement will amount in substantive change is yet unclear. In spite of such uncertainties, however, Ravel maintained that an active optimism will be an essential tool in the arsenal of those seeking to promote justice. “There are a lot of ways of participating, making your voice heard, talking to Congress and encouraging others to also become active,” she remarked. “If we’re all participating and making our opinions on these issues known, [change] can be engendered. There’s no question.”
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April 7, 2016
Greenberg explores social elements of urban sustainability Eilis Donohue News Editor
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sustainable city is more than a collection of environmentally conscious buildings and businesses; it should also be a socially aware and economically just system. Author and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Santa Cruz Miriam Greenberg spoke on April 4 about the inequality in sustainable cities, in her talk titled “Beyond Ecotopia: Green Displacement and the Challenge of Equity in the Sustainable City.” The event sponsors included the Urban Studies Program, the Departments of Political Science, Sociology, Earth Science and Geography, and the Office of Sustainability. The intersectionality of sustainability is often overlooked, the concept relegated to fields related to environmental science, but it necessarily has to do with government, business and social issues as well.
Greenberg urged her audience to be aware of the ambiguity of the term “sustainability” itself. “[T]here is of course this market-oriented sustainability, in which the environment to be sustained is often linked to capital, to be able to circulate and to grow and to accumulate,” she explained. “[There is also] justice-oriented sustainability, which is often focused on humans and on social equity kinds of questions, and on the need for people to have access to nature and to live in healthy environments.” The sustainability movement is often imagined as something based in wilderness, separate from the gray, dirty space of cities. However, Greenberg asserted, “The hippie-modernists, one of their interesting distinctions from other environmentalists at the time, was that they were quite pro-urban in a sense, they weren’t so much ‘back to the land,’ they were interested in finding ecological solutions to the urban realm.” There
Courtesy of Vassar College Political Science Department
On April 4 Miriam Greenberg spoke about the role of equity in sustainability. Greenberg was sponsored by a variety of departments, indicating the inherent intersectionality of her work.
is a historical precedent not only for greening cities, but also for establishing those spaces as exclusionary, whether intentionally or not. Greenberg acknowledged that dreaming of a utopia is not pointless, but when put into practice, utopias are never as ideal as they are in theory. “[W]hen the utopian impulse becomes a utopian project, when people try to build these utopias, we find so often that they are exclusionary, that they are bounded in various ways,” she said. San Francisco, where Greenberg is currently based, is often held up as a shining example of a green city, where progressive policies and plans have been successfully implemented and sustainability is a priority. However, this narrow view fails to take into account the fact that the city is unaffordable and unequal for so many, and therefore is an elite and exclusionary space. Director of Urban Studies and Associate Professor of English Tyrone Simpson warned, “All that is green may not necessarily be progressive.” Sustainability is often framed in terms of the so-called three E’s: ecology, equity and economy. However, Greenberg explained, “Not all E’s are created equal, and one of the E’s that certainly in our region has been the most powerful is economy.” Sustainable efforts in cities, while usually concentrated on scientific improvements in areas such as energy consumption and pollution, are definitively part of the economic system of a city. Associate Professor of Geography Mary Ann Cunningham agreed, “Sustainable efforts are one of the current forms of amenity development in the city. I feel like it’s easy to critique the sustainability aspect of it, but what really is the driver is the government structure.” Business, government and environmental consciousness go hand in hand in the U.S. market economy, especially in city settings. Greenberg addressed the concept of greenwashing–labeling products as green in order to play on the public’s conscience and convince them that they are helping the environment as they purchase goods. “If you can frame [a city] as clean and
green, it’s going to flip the script and take people’s attention away from prices,” she observed. This stimulates the economy, but is not always truly helpful for the environment. In addition, “green” products can often be more expensive than the general population can afford, another example of the privilege of sustainable living. Greenberg spoke about displacement, both loss of physical housing and of economic possibility. “[O]pportunities for growth in certain areas… become great opportunities for some areas, but also create this unevenness in the form of barriers to growth for other, underdeveloped areas,” she said. Although Greenberg’s talk focused mainly on her experiences in the San Francisco Bay area, her ideas are equally applicable in New York and Poughkeepsie. Professor of Sociology Leonard Nevarez remarked, “The Hudson Valley is part of the metropolitan region of New York, and it’s connected by the ecological systems. It draws on the people and consumer dollars from the city, even if they don’t live here.” Poughkeepsie has experienced the negative effects of post-crisis existence that Greenberg expounded on, gentrification and displacement among them. However, effort is being made to bring those issues to the collective consciousness and work towards truly comprehensive sustainability. Sustainability Coordinator Alistair Hall said, “April 22 we’re holding what we call the Poughkeepsie Community Wealth Building Conference. [We’ll be] trying to address these notions of, how do we promote economic development in the community, in a way that is inclusive and sustainability-oriented, with a focus on the social sustainability.” Sustainability is feasible here in the Hudson Valley, on the opposite coast from the hub of green urbanism, but it will require an effort to consider the intersectionality of sustainability. Simpson advised, “[We need] to be a bit more vigilant about the political effects we value of eco-utopia, and its potential to create community.”
With Cappy’s departure, concern focuses on financial aid CAPPY continued from page 1
really important issue that has gotten less attention than it deserves,” she explained. Hill’s successful implementation of needblind admissions at Vassar has had a profound impact on student finances. Prior to her arrival, Vassar College was as a need-aware institution that granted $6,541,453 in financial aid to the class of 2009. After Hill’s arrival, scholarship money increased rapidly each year, reaching $17,437,883 for the most recent class of 2019 (Vassar College Factbook 2015-2016, 33).“At the time, the college was not particularly diverse relative to its peers,” Hill wrote. “As a community, we talked about our financial aid policies and made changes to attract a more diverse applicant pool.” Hill also recounted that during the Great Recession, Vassar continued to increase spending on financial aid using money from the endowment. “We have been managing our total spending to get back to financial sustainability, but the last few years of poor financial returns on the endowment are proving challenging.” As Director of Student Financial Services, Jessica Bernier has worked closely with financial aid, under Hill’s influence. In the time that President Hill has been part of the Administration, she confirmed, financial aid has undergone a dramatic transformation. Bernier explained, “When she came on board and [headed] the push for need blind and also having no loans for our lowest-income students, that really changed financial aid and what our campus looked like.” Bernier emphasized the importance that Hill’s focus on financial aid has had on the makeup of the student body as a whole. As she described, “This campus looks completely different as far as our student body goes. I think that’s the legacy that [President Hill] would want people to remember. Our diversity has increased across every different sector. [I’m] thinking about race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, geography, nationality, that is the product of financial aid going need-blind ... [I]t became more accessible to more students...and I think it’s for the better.“ As important as need-blind admissions has been as a symbolic measure to reinforce Vassar’s
commitment to economic accessibility, Bernier and the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid (CAFA) student representative Joshua Sherman ’16 both stressed the nuance behind the term “need-blind.” Bernier was quick to explain that while the terms “need-blind” and “need-aware” or “need-sensitive” had powerful meanings, they aren’t always so different in practice. Going back to need-aware admissions is not necessarily the wholesale move away from economic accessibility that some are worried about. In effect, both terms fall on a spectrum. “Needblind” may be at one end, but “need-aware” isn’t always at the other end. As Bernier explained, “Thinking about need-aware, need-sensitive, it can run the gamut. I’ve been at schools where it was a factor, they wanted to know exactly how much the student was going to need of institutional aid at the time of decision and then I’ve been at the other extreme where they’re essentially need-blind until they get to the end and realize based on projections they could be over budget when the class comes in so they tweak it at that point. It’s really based on each institution.” A critique of the need-blind appraoch is that colleges are often more concerned with the financial consequences of committing to needblind admissions, rather than the implications for potential and current students. According to Sherman, Hill’s initiative to foster need-blind admissions at Vassar has a complex history that hasn’t always been inspired by the same kind of personal and social concerns that many students bring to conversations about admissions today. As he reflected, “Some in higher education look at need-blind admissions as a tool that moves certain metrics, often in diversity and low-income accessibility. Vassar’s decision to go need-blind can no longer be seen as something that simply moves metrics. It should be viewed as something the college is financially fortunate enough to start doing, as something that does good for the world, that does good for the college and does good for the student body as a whole. To reverse this trend in any way, even if you could prevent a change in these metrics, irreparably destroys something we started building 10 years ago.” The important thing to remember, Sherman ex-
plained, was that considering need-blind admissions and its reality at Vassar cannot be simplified or considered solely in terms of the numbers behind the College’s finances. “To me, you can’t see these policies through metrics alone. When people around the world talk about Vassar and center that discussion around its admission and financial aid policies, you can’t quantify that through a set of certain numbers that inherently dismiss the larger meaning,” he said. Although students receive similar financial aid packages under both need-blind and needaware admissions, Bernier reiterated that many prefer the title of need-blind admissions also for its equitable associations. As she explained, “You also have to think of it from the student perspective. Knowing that they need every dollar, are they going to get it? Filling out the essays and paying the application fees, that can add up and if you think, ‘Well I need so much money, they’re probably not going to let me in, so why bother?’” But Bernier also spoke to the need for constant revision of financial aid and every other College policy. To her, the placement of a new president on campus is an opportunity for a fresh perspective. And that perspective might have a new approach to the College’s financial aid approach. “With a new president, almost anything is fair game. They have every right to come in and question everything we’ve done and why we’ve done it. I’m sure need-blind admissions will be on the table much like new buildings will be on the table. I think it’s right for anyone to question everything that we’re doing. It’s always good to have a fresh set of eyes,” she said. But there are further complexities to the conversation about Hill’s departure from Vassar and its effect on financial aid. One such point connects directly to the criticisms that Hill has weathered during her time in office. Despite recent advances in diversity, some find being a student more challenging than affording tuition. Students from low-income backgrounds in particular report a lack of support from the college once they have arrived on campus. Health-care and housing are two notable examples of a seeming disconnect between Hill’s vision for an economically accessible institution
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
and the reality that many low-income students experience. A letter from the VSA Committee on Student Life to the Administration outlines issues with healthcare that students have faced: “The VSA Committee on Student Life has received numerous concerns from students about the accessibility of off-campus mental, medical, and pharmaceutical services...The college lacks a 24-hour medical center. There are no doctors available during evening hours or weekends, and there are few specialists and other such medical professionals. Because of this, students depend on specialists, general practitioners, therapists, and other professionals that are not located on campus. Furthermore, all emergency medical services are provided through hospitals not located near campus. Vassar students subsequently experience numerous challenges in order to reach such facilities, whether for regularly scheduled appointments, or to return to campus following emergency transport and care.” The letter, in part, argues that a lack of institutional support for students, particularly students who could not afford their own transportation to and from private medical services, made life at Vassar economically inaccessible. As Sherman reflected, this time as SoCo President and a co-signer of the letter, “What is this commitment if it doesn’t also meet these and other needs? We’ve learned a lot during this first decade of need-blind admissions, and now it’s time to learn from this and do it better in the next decade with the reaffirmed commitment of students, administrators, faculty, and alumnae/i.” Whatever happens with need-blind admissions after President Hill takes her leave, one thing seems to be clear: Vassar’s focus on financial aid services isn’t going anywhere. “Vassar has always been committed to meeting 100 percent of the students’ need. I think our overall world has changed since President Hill has come in. More schools are offering more need-based aid, some are trying to move away from merit aid. I don’t think we are ever going to completely shift away from what we do. It will always be a priority. I don’t see a shift away from making financial aid a priority,” Bernier said.
April 7, 2016
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Kaplan explores challenges of differences in language Matt Stein Reporter
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courtesy of awomansparis.com
ost of us have read Homer or Dostoyevsky or Dante at some point, but very few of us have actually read the original texts. Instead, you’ve most likely read a translation, written by somebody else who may have altered the meaning no matter how accurate they were. And while this may seem to only affect words, it can also heavily influence the legacy of an author’s work, as can be said for Albert Camus’s oeuvres. On Monday, April 11 at 5:30 p.m., Professor Alice Kaplan of Yale University will be giving a lecture called “How Albert Camus’s L’Etranger Became The Stranger: A Literary Translation and the long life of a classic.” Kaplan will discuss the novel’s process in becoming a classic and how the 1946 English translation enhanced its status. The lecture is sponsored by multiple departments, including the host department, French and Francophone Studies, as well as Philosophy, English and Africana Studies. Kaplan currently is the John M. Musser Professor of French and the chair of the French Department at Yale University, where she’s taught since 2009. She originally attended Vassar as an undergraduate before transferring to University of California, Berkeley to earn her B.A. in French and her PhD afterward at Yale. Kaplan has written several books on 20th-Century French cultural history and translated multiple books from French to English as well. In October, Kaplan will publish her book “Looking for The Stranger,” which will expand upon material presented in this lecture. Last summer in Paris, Professor and Chair of French and Francophone Studies and the organizer of this lecture Susan Hiner met Kaplan, where she explained to Kaplan an exciting discovery found at Vassar that convinced Kaplan to visit: “I told Alice that it must have been fate because when I became chair back in 2011, while going though some books in the chair’s office with Ron Patkus, the director of Special Collections, we discovered a letter pressed in a book. It was a letter from Albert Camus, signed by him, thanking a French professor for
his hospitality during a visit to campus. Camus had visited Vassar on several occasions it turns out. All of this was very evocative to me, and Professor Kaplan was thrilled to hear about the letter.” Albert Camus originally published “L’Etranger,” translated as “The Stranger” in America and “The Outsider” in the UK, in 1942, and today his work is still regarded as an exemplar of existentialism. In 1946, Camus came to Vassar to give a lecture on French contemporary theatre, speaking right before his career significantly took off. Besides his works of philosophy, Camus wrote several novels and plays and in 1957 received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite dying in an untimely car accident at age 46, his legacy persists today as one of the greatest thinkers of the modern era. Professor of French and Francophone Studies Cynthia Kerr, who teaches “L’Etranger” in one of her courses and in a seminar which focuses on translation, explained how errors in translating can define a legacy: “The 1946 translation by Stuart Gilbert, a British literary scholar, is widely viewed today as inaccurate because it distorts Camus’s intentions, characters and style,” she remarked. “In it, Gilbert embroidered, explained and interpreted in ways that transformed the original into a far wordier text with a decidedly British tone. For 36 years, however, Gilbert’s text remained the only English version available. It was thus through a distorted version of the original that generations of American and British students learned about Meursault, his mother, and his crime.” The process of translating can be very challenging, with the translator having to make numerous decisions on meanings as well as cultural connotations. A translator can’t give a literal translation either, so they must also essentially serve as an editor. A skillful linguist would be able to turn an ancient Greek play into a critique of nuclear war if they select the right words. French and Francophone Studies major Noah Mintz ’16, who is translating a Patrick Modiano novel from French into English this semester, spoke about the difficulties one faces
On April 11, Professor Alice Kaplan of Yale University will be giving a lecture called “How Albert Camus’s L’Estranger Became The Stranger: A Literary Translation and the long life of a classic.” in translating: “What I will say is that French is deceptively close to English, and so presents some tempting pitfalls. It’s easy to do a literal translation, one that is semantically ‘faithful’ to the French, bearing all the same meaning, and yet a complete disaster in terms of style and tone.” In her own work, Kaplan has run into the challenges of translation as she writes in both French and English. Her first book, “Reproductions of Banality” (1986), was a theoretical exploration of French fascism. Since then she has published books on Céline’s antisemitic pamphlets (sources et citations dans “Bagatelles pour un massacre”), on the treason trial of Robert Brasillach (“The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach”), and on American courts-martial in newly liberated France (“The Interpreter”). With a world around us and more languages than there are countries, translators are still
relevant and essential. With any foreign text, it’s not as simple as typing in the words into Google Translate, because the essence of a text requires knowing more than just the surface meaning. A translator needs to understand both languages’ cultures and apply that knowledge which is more than any computer can do. “Translation is a complex task requiring an intimate knowledge of the source and target languages, an in-depth understanding of the text at hand and a large dose of patience and humility,” Kerr said of the dilemmas of the translator. “The goal of a good translator is not to flesh out a novel, skew its characters or add humor to what may seem like a lifeless description. Nor is it to agonize endlessly over the multiple nuances, denotations and connotations of each and every word to the point of losing the flow. The art of translation lies in finding a happy medium and remaining faithful to the author.”
Relay for Life fundraises, coordinates benefit concert Aditi Chandna Reporter
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taken by the Relay for Life team. Participating in Marist College’s Relay for Life event is a definite way to generate larger support for the cause and greater publicity to fight such a deadly disease. For Vassar’s Relay for Life team, there is no such thing as over-preparation. “ Preparation for the event started last semester. The members of Vassar’s Relay for Life exec boardprepared for the event by taking care of various aspects of the event, such as logistics and entertainment, and then focusing on marketing,” said Sulovari. The team has also partnered with the American Cancer Society to work out the specifics. “We coordinated with the American Cancer Society of Hudson Valley to register our team following member recruitment. We then dis-
Charlene N Simmons via Flickr
ou can’t win a relay without a team. This year, the Vassar Relay for Life team is passing the baton to Marist College. Hosting the event at Marist instead of on Vassar campus this year is a change from past tradition, but aims to raise more money for cancer research through a combined effort. The Relay for Life team is trying to raise funds for cancer patients and medical research through a benefit concert that will feature performances by well-known Vassar music groups and artists. The Relay for Life Benefit Concert, which will take place on the April 8, will contribute to the greater community and hopefully save lives. Cancer is a disease that has touched most people’s lives in some form or the other and too many people have lost loved ones to cancer. This event highlights its importance as well as the need to do something to help all the people and their families who have to live through cancer. Relay for Life Co-President Aron Sulovari ’18 explained, “Relay for Life Kickoff is a benefit concert organized by Vassar’s Relay for Life team as they fundraise for their participation in Marist’s Relay for Life event on April 22, which represents the Hudson Valley region.” While Marist College will host the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life event, many schools, organizations and individuals in the community will come together to help support the event to end cancer. Participating in this event will provide help to a breast cancer patient in the form of one-on-one peer support from a breast cancer survivor and rides to and from treatment centers. It also offers cancer patients and their caregiver one night of free lodging at an American Cancer Society Hope Lodge, which offers a more homey environment for patients and caregivers. Sulovari added, “This is the first time Vassar
is participating in the event. Relay for Life is an annual fundraising campaign organized by the American Cancer Society.” The Relay for Life team is excited about the event and hopes it goes off without a hitch. Sulovari explained that the successes of this year’s Benefit Concert may well represent how Relay for Life will be able to fundraise in the future. “We expect the event to go well, and set a precedent for futureevents. This is the first time Vassar’s Relay for Life team is hosting such an event,” Sulovari said. He went on, “Traditionally, we have hosted a ‘mini’ Relay for Life here at the college. In order to better integrate into the greater Hudson Valley community, we have decided to participate in a larger event instead.” It is a great venture that has been under-
Relay for Life at Vassar will participate in its first event on April 22, hosted by Marist College. In order to prepare for the event, the Relay for Life team will host a fundraiser complete with music and food.
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cussed what would be the most effective way to both fundraise and raise awareness. We decided that a benefit concert which engages student groups would be the best fit,” Sulovari said. The Relay for Life team hopes that the promise of hearing music made by peers will attract many people to the event. Sulovari went on to explain the other aspects of planing and preparation that are needed for the event, saying, “We worked closely with SARC and various departments to actually plan the event and student orgs to arrange the performances. We then went about marketing it ourselves via social media and flyers.” Publicity is always a crucial element in planning an event, especially an event that can bring so much good to the world and is for charity. “The event has been publicized by our Facebook event, flyers around campus and house teams,” added Sulovari. Live music and great food are always key elements in generating enthusiastic participation and the Relay for Life team made sure to work with many other on-campus groups to provide music, rather than bands from the surrounding community. “We reached out to student orgs which we knew were interested in performing at our event,” Sulovari said. He added, “Performers include the Vastards, Beauty and the Beats, Measure for Measure, The Run to Earth, Desperate Measures, FAQ Section, Vassar Sori and a Djed Playlist.” The sheer number of performances and participants are sure to bring in a large crowd and keep them entertained and happy. “In terms of food, Local vendors that frequent Vassar were contacted,” said Sulovari. If the food selection is anything like Tasty Tuesday then crowds of students will be rushing to the event, no questions asked. According to the Relay for Life website, “Each person who shares the Relay For Life experience can take pride in knowing that they are working to create a world where this disease will no longer threaten our loved ones or rob anyone of another birthday.”
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Young female scientists foster community development STEM continued from page 1 community of students who support each other and who help one another cope with the struggles of being female-identifying in a historically male-dominated field.” While women now earn more bachelor and graduate degrees than men and comprise half of the national workforce, they make up only a quarter of STEM employees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Although women have won greater representation in the life sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, medicine) over the past several decades, but remain woefully underrepresented in more math-intensive fields (e.g., engineering, computer science). The National Science Foundation recently reported that women comprise less than 20 percent of all computer science graduates.
Computer Science major and head of Women in STEM’s subgroup Women in Tech Laura Barreto ’17 personally attested to this statistic, describing her experience during the summer in which she was one of only three female interns (out of 15 total) at a technology research lab. She recalled an incident in which a male colleague made an offhanded comment in regards to a minority-recruitment system at the institution. “It was a situation in which I was just furious. If I were to say anything, it would only feed into whatever stereotype they had of women, whether it be that women are too emotional, too sensitive or too easily offended to be competent researchers,” Barreto said. Female scientists have long been under-appreciated by both the academy and society as a whole. Just last June, Dr. Tim Hunt, a British
courtesy of Neila Kline
Women in STEM offers a space for women to become more connected and comfortable within their traditionally male-dominated fields. The group hopes to remain an outspoken voice on camps.
scientist and Nobel laureate, remarked to audience members at the World Conference of Science Journalists, “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them [women], they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.” Hunt later apologized but maintained his position (The Guardian, “Nobel scientist Tim Hunt: female scientists cause trouble for men in labs,” 06.10.15). For decades, female scientists have been subjected to demeaning rhetoric of this sort in the workplace, along with structural, emotional and sexual exploitation by their male colleagues and superiors. A number of scholars contend that many of the discoveries of women scientists have even been co-opted by their male peers. One such instance was the notable case of James Watson and Francis Crick receiving credit–and later, a Nobel Prize–for the discovery of DNA’s double-helical structure, a discovery first made by British X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. Due to anti-nepotism laws that prevented female scientists from gaining employment in the same institution as their husbands, many women were denied access to research opportunities throughout the 20th century that would have otherwise furthered their careers. Although these laws were amended in 1971, their effects can be seen today–women comprise only a fraction of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and are significantly underrepresented among top levels of research, such as post-doctoral fellows and principal investigators (PIs). The numbers become even smaller when considering women of color, trans women and non-binary persons. At Vassar, Women in STEM is committed to including students of all marginalized identities in the sciences. “I think that it’s very necessary for there to be a space for not just women, but non-binary and trans individuals, to get together and talk about what it’s like for our identities to affect the way the world views us,” said Barreto.
The group has already hosted several campus-wide events, including two lectures by female scientists and an alumnae panel in early March featuring four female Vassar graduates working in STEM-related fields. The event consisted of an introductory panel discussion, followed by more casual, small group discussions with the alumnae over lunch. Approximately 30 students from a myriad of different majors attended the event. Kline was pleasantly surprised by the overall enthusiasm of the attendees, remarking how many stayed after the panel had ended to continue talking with the panelists. Natalie DiCenzo ’16, a Neuroscience and Behavior major and one of the first members of Women in STEM, believes it is networking opportunities like this that can make an enormous difference for female students in the sciences. “Reach out to people who are older than you, who might have been in your shoes, because they can be really great resources.” Having strong female role models in the sciences, whether they are female faculty, alums or upperclassmen, can really provide the support and advice needed to succeed, DiCenzo emphasized. Both Kline and Werner hope that Women in STEM will eventually become part of a larger network of Women in Science organizations on college campuses across the country. The org would be able to participate in webinars, contribute to weekly newsletters in addition to having a larger impact not just on campus, but maybe on a more regional, national scale, according to Kline. Beyond discussing articles and giving advice on internships and job applications, Women in STEM meetings aim to help members feel empowered, rather than oppressed by their identities. As articulated by Barreto, “Feel[ing] empowered by your identity can carry you a long way when there are people telling you that you can’t do it, that you can’t succeed, or that you’re not smart enough.”
Privilege Campaign returns for its third exhibition Alan Hagins
Assistant Features Editor
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or the third year in a row, the Privilege Campaign has delivered an installation of student and administrators portraits which bring to light the intrinsic and environmental advantages of their subjects. The faces, viewed straight on, unabashedly wear the words of privilege otherwise read into their identity. “I am an able bodied upper-middle class, cisgender, heterosexual male. With these combined identities my privilege is exponentially greater than any one of them alone,” Anish Kanoria’s ’18 right cheekbone reads. On panels next to each portrait, the subjects share their thoughts on dominant privileges and reflections associated with not having access to privilege. Yesterday, the gallery had its opening reception on the second floor of the college center.
Antony Manokhin ’18 “I was raised and live in an affluent town. My privileges in that setting are intensely apparent. I’m white, able bodied, and a man in a community run by people who are like me. People unlike me are treated differently and unfairly. However, I am a child of an immigrant, live in a single parent household, and my family and I are of lower socioeconomic status compared to my peers and neighbors. These facts do not give me privilege.”
Kim Culligan: “I am perceived to be educated, speak English, employed and nonthreatening because I am white. I will be more likely to get a job, advance to higher levels of responsibility and perceived as more competent since I am white. I have never been unemployed and am happy to be working at Vassar College in my terminal job. I plan to retire within the next few years after spending 29 years in collegiate athletics.”
Frank Najarro ’18 “I have privilege. I often talk about the identities that make me less privileged, but this session helped me to understand and own the privilege that I do have. That is not to say that it makes the struggle of being less privileged any easier. It is to recognize the privilege that I do have, own up to it, and continue the struggle for a more equal society and world community.”
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Ashley Hoyle ’18 “As a white person, I have been afforded unearned benefits to my education, social status, and professional development. I am never asked to be a spokesperson for my race and have never been considered an exception when I perform at a high level. I have never been made to feel unwelcome because of irrational, systemically ingrained fear within the dominant culture. As a queer-identifying individual I cannot make choices without them being conflated by my sexual orientation.”
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April 7, 2016
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Art intro class altered in significant shift to curriculum ART continued from page 1
In addition, Art 105 will cover Chinese modern art in the 1990’s. “After 1989 it became possible for people to see more of what was going on in the west, but as it came over the transept it didn’t come in any particular order. Chinese artists who began to work with these different elements put a past into their present and made different kinds of hybrids that made sense for the Chinese contexts,” Nesbit said. For the first time the two courses will stand alone, but they will be in conversation. The department hopes students will elect to take both courses; for Art History majors, the two courses will remain part of the required curriculum. “Art 105 is going to end with Leonardo [Da Vinci], and probably with the relation between Leonardo’s sense of the activity of the brain compared with what we now know biologically,” said Nesbit. Art 106 will work from past to present, looking first at Michelangelo in the High Renaissance and then moving to contemporary architecture and video. The course will emphasize the effects of industrialization and mass media on artists and architects in the 19th century, and the increasing rate of technological change to the present. In both courses, the department hopes to teach students the tools of visual analysis within a historical context. Most importantly, the course aims to provide a framework for students’ future education. “When art history is taught at its best, it allows you to think about anything,” Nesbit said. In her freshman year, Brown found an opportunity to learn all of these skills and more. As she said, “Art 105/6 gave me a historical field that I could understand and describe visually. I quickly realized that visual information is never neutral; it forces you to consider where you are standing and what future you are looking towards.” The skills students learn in Art 105/106 can be applied to virtually any time or subject; part of the reason is that the field is so dynamic. In the words of Nesbit, “Art history is not defined by a group of people very narrowly considering questions of beauty on the head of a pin. Art 105/106 gives you a panorama and allows you to
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orient yourself and your mind, and proceed the way you would, whether you were going to be an art historian, and English major, or a biologist.” For those who take the course early on in freshman or sophomore year, it offers the chance to develop tools that will be relevant in other coursework later in life. Art History major, Sophie Asakura ‘16, said, “Art 105/106 was definitely one of the most formative courses for me while at Vassar. I am glad though, that the department is trying to be responsive to student and institutional needs.” The three-day-a-week lecture course is team taught by the department, and is unlike any course at Vassar. “You start in the dark, and you’re not sure why, and there are these beautiful projections,” Nesbit said. The high quality images are displayed on the same kind of projector used at the Sundance Film Festival. The dark lecture hall provides a unique edu-
cational space for thought, and as the semester’s weeks pass by, Art 105/106 students fall into a kind of rhythm. “Usually, in Art 105, you’re sitting in the dark while the story unfolds before your eyes. In a funny way, that can be the place to have a conversation about our culture, about our campus. I don’t think one is well prepared to enter a global culture unless you can hear and see other languages, other cultures, with more nuances” Nesbit continued. The Art History department polled students twice to determine the kind of changes students would like to see in a course that has been a staple of Vassar’s course offerings since close to the founding of the college. As Nesbit reflected, “I want every Vassar student to feel they want to take it. That it’s not an obligation, and see it as a way to learn more about the world, to begin to learn more about the world. To see it as a way to launch.”
Alec Ferretti/The Miscellany News
angles. Nesbit said, “We have to think about education as an ongoing matter, it’s not the province of any one field.” The changes to Art 105, then, stemmed from the hopes to reach out to a more diverse group of students on campus. “We needed to understand how to make it more accessible, really,” Nesbit said. She went on, “It turned out that what we heard from much of the questionnaire was very positive. We were going to go from 3 days a week to 2 days, and that would have involved a major restructuring of the course, because none of our lectures would have fit. We were prepared to think about it, seriously. We were thinking about making Art 105 a freshman writing seminar.” Splitting the course in two was the department’s ultimate response to student input. Nesbit said, “I don’t think we lose anything by a split into two sections, if anything it will grow intellectually from being cut in two.” Art History Major Angela Brown ’16 agreed with Nesbit that it will be easier to follow the course after it has been split. She said, “I think that splitting the class will encourage a less-linear understanding of time. For years, the class has started with ancient architecture and marched on towards modernism. While this creates a clear historical arc, students sometimes forget to question its linearity.” She went on, “I think splitting the course, since it will necessitate a re-emphasis on thematic questions, will allow students to think about connections between times and places in a more nuanced way. Creating these connections is extremely relevant to contemporary socio-political questions.” The new structure of the course will incorporate art from all around the world across multiple time periods, but it will start in the present. Nesbit said, “We included the present in Art 105 because it’s important to look at where you’re standing. For the first week, every lecture will be taught by someone different, and then it will kick into longer cycles. At the beginning you will see the laser scans of Notre-Dame, you will see the Spiral Jetty.”
In an attempt to better present their material, Art 105 is changing their structure and splitting the course into smaller, more digestable pieces. The course no longer will have to move linerarly through history.
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April 7, 2016
Tippett reinvigorates crucial discussion of compassion Julia Cunningham
Assistant Features Editor
“H
ow do we speak the questions we don’t know how to ask each other? Can we find ways to bridge gulfs between us about politics, morality and life itself? Can we do that even while we continue to disagree, passionately? How is technology playing into all this, and how can we shape it?” These are the questions that the award-winning American journalist and author Krista Tippett seeks to answer through not just her own experiences but also through her guests on the public radio program and podcast that she created and hosts called “On Being.” Throughout her life, Tippett has found herself in situations that could test the limits of the topic she focuses most often on: compassion. Tippett, in a TED Talk in 2010 explained, “To start simply, I want to say that compassion is kind. Now ‘kindness’ might sound like a very mild word, and it’s prone to its own abundant cliche. But kindness is an everyday byproduct of all the great virtues. And it is a most edifying form of instant gratification.” After studying history at Brown University, in 1983, Tippett moved on to Bonn, West Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship with the intention of studying politics in Cold War Europe. While in Europe she spent time in divided Berlin writing freelance for multiple international publications. She later became a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Executive Administrator for the President Kathy Knauss explained that when Tippett comes to Vassar on April 12, she will be speaking about the meaning of compassion in today’s society. “The title of her lecture is ‘The Adventure of Civility,’” Knauss said. Tippett explained of her own lecture, “Our young century is awash with urgent questions of survival, of meaning, of how we structure our common life and who we are to each other. And yet it seems we are more divided than ever before–unable to listen and speak across the differences we must engage to create the world we want for ourselves and our children.”
Knauss said that Tippett’s lecture is a relevant topic at any time and in any space around campus. “We are bringing her to the Vassar campus so that the community can hear her perspective on the importance and value of listening to each other in a respectful way,” Knauss said. She added, “We hope that she can help our efforts to have productive conversations between individuals and groups with different opinions.” Tippett is an acclaimed name in her field. “In July 2014, Tippett was awarded the 2013 National Humanities Medal by President Obama for ‘thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence,’” Knauss explained. She has also received a George Foster Peabody Award in 2008 for “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi” and three Webby awards for excellence in electronic media. The Webby awards went to her radio show “On Being.” According to its website, “‘On Being’ is a is a social enterprise with a radio show at its heart.” The show was originally called “Speaking of Faith,” which Tippett created at Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media. In the show, Tippett draws out voices of wisdom, poetry and practicality, one-on-one as well as in dialogue. The website states, “They model a new kind of conversation and relationship with difference. They offer ideas and tools for healing our fractured civic spaces.” After Tippett left Berlin in 1988, the year before the Wall fell, she lived in Spain, England and Scotland for a time before pursuing a M.Div. from Yale. When she graduated in 1994, she saw a black hole where intelligent coverage of religion should be and began her radio show. In 2003, it launched on weekly, public radio stations across the country. “On Being” now airs on more than 400 public radio stations across the U.S. This lecture is hosted by the Office of the President and will take place in the Students’ Building 2nd Floor MPR at 5 p.m. There is always room for opening discussions regarding compassion. In 2010, Tippett
presented a Ted Talk entitled “Reconnecting with Compassion” where she spoke about the adventure of civility. “When this country first encountered genuine diversity in the 1960s, we adopted tolerance as the core civic virtue with which we would approach that,” Tippett said. She went on to explain the definition of tolerance as “allowing,” “indulging” and “enduring.” Tippett goes as far as to suggest, “I think that without perhaps being able to name it, we are collectively experiencing that we’ve come as far as we can with tolerance as our only guiding virtue.” On the adventure of civility, however, Tippett suggests compassion is quick to follow tolerance. “Compassion is a worthy successor,” she said, adding, “It is organic, across our religious, spiritual and ethical traditions, and yet it transcends them.” She went on to explain the tangibility of compassion. “I’m not sure if I can show you what tolerance looks like, but I can show you what compassion looks like—because it is visible. When we see it, we recognize it and it changes the way we think about what is doable, what is possible.” There are two stories that Tippett shares to better outline her argument about compassion. The first is in regards to a man she met who was paralyzed from the waist down. Compassion, Tippet explained in this situation, comes in a physical form. “I first started to learn this most vividly from Matthew Sanford. And I don’t imagine that you will realize this when you look at this photograph of him, but he’s paraplegic. He’s been paralyzed from the waist down since he was 13, in a car crash that killed his father and his sister. Matthew’s legs don’t work, and he’ll never walk again, and—and he does experience this as an ‘and’ rather than a ‘but’—and he experiences himself to be healed and whole.” Sanford teaches yoga, where he brings his experiences to others across the spectrum of ability and disability, health, illness and aging. Tippett said, “He says that he’s just at an extreme end of the spectrum we’re all on. He’s
doing some amazing work now with veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. And Matthew has made this remarkable observation that I’m just going to offer you and let it sit. I can’t quite explain it, and he can’t either. But he says that he has yet to experience someone who became more aware of their body, in all its frailty and its grace, without, at the same time, becoming more compassionate towards all of life.” In front of the TED audience, Tippett shared another story about a man who has founded communities for people with mental disabilities. “Jean Vanier helped found the L’Arche communities, which you can now find all over the world, communities centered around life with people with mental disabilities—mostly Down syndrome. The communities that Jean Vanier founded, like Jean Vanier himself, exude tenderness,” Tippett said. She went on, “‘Tender’ is another word I would love to spend some time resurrecting. We spend so much time in this culture being driven and aggressive, and I spend a lot of time being those things too. And compassion can also have those qualities. But again and again, lived compassion brings us back to the wisdom of tenderness.” Selflessness, Tippett explained, is important for compassion. “Jean Vanier says that his work, like the work of other people–his great, beloved, late friend Mother Teresa–is never in the first instance about changing the world; it’s in the first instance about changing ourselves. He’s says that what they do with L’Arche is not a solution, but a sign. Compassion is rarely a solution, but it is always a sign of a deeper reality, of deeper human possibilities,” she said. Compassion as a topic will appear throughout Tuesday’s lecture. Knauss spoke to the broader importance of Tippett’s talk: “Certainly having respectful conversations is something we concern ourselves with consistently on campus. It is a central part of our education, learning from one another with our many different backgrounds, perspectives and opinions.”
Cheesy, fried “wind empanadas” to satisfy all your cravings Rafaela Vega del Castillo Guest Reporter
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Courtesy of sinmiedosec.com
ou are walking around the center of Quito, on a street called La Ronda, as something peculiar catches your eye. You take a look at what a man is selling outside the restaurant in the corner and you can’t believe the gigantic size of the empanadas he holds. You get closer and admire the plumpness of this dough-creation and you begin to wonder how much filling was probably needed to fill it. Its flawless browning on the outside, the small bubbles that form in its crust, and the granulated sugar sprinkled on top leave you wondering if, after all this time, you’ve finally found the type of heaven you’ve been looking for. A sign right above the door of his restaurant promotes these empanadas as “Empanadas de Viento.” You ask, in Spanish, for the price of one of these, and you are surprised when the man tells you that they cost 50 cents. With pleasant disbelief, you take two quarters out of your bag and give them to him in exchange for this delicious, doughy paradise that you are about to experience. When he hands you the gigantic empanada, you are surprised to see that it doesn’t weigh nearly as much as you were expecting for such a large confection, but you ignore that thought because you still can’t wait to bite into this cheesy delight. You open your mouth widely and take your first bite, and suddenly, you realize that this empanada is full of air. Empanadas de viento, or wind empanadas, are a traditional Ecuadorian food. Grandmothers have been making this cultural and culinary staple in Ecuadorian homes for years and years and the tradition has been kept alive through the inheritance of the love for this type of empanadas within the Ecuadorian society. Tourists and visitors of Quito, the capital
city of this South American country, have also been able to appreciate the flavor and tradition that this food staple encloses. Empanadas de viento are made out of sweet dough and filled with fresh cheese. When these empanadas are fried, they inflate, creating a hole full of air on their inside and allowing the small amount of fresh cheese to melt and flow freely in this newly created space. White granulated sugar is sprinkled on top as soon as they are done frying, giving these a sweet and salty contrast of flavor and a tiny bit of sparkle to delight the eyes. Empanadas de viento generally come in differing sizes, from the size of a Vassar V-card to the size of a pillow. It is usually easier to find the small version of this empanada in various restaurants throughout the Ecuadorian capital, but there is one street in Quito that is famous for the gargantuan sizes of their empanadas de viento. This street is called La Ronda. La Ronda is a curved and steep street that extends for three blocks in downtown Quito. It is famous among locals and tourists due to its nightlife. The buildings at each side of the street have been carefully restored throughout the years, allowing the colonial façade to remain as the most important feature of this street’s character. As soon as the sun comes down, La Ronda comes alive with the music that comes from inside its bars, the dim illumination of its colonial-style lamp posts, the laughter and upbeat conversation in Spanish from the people enjoying the environment, and the glorious smell of empanadas de viento being sold in every step of the way. This is the ideal way to enjoy an authentic empanada de viento in Quito. Because Poughkeepsie doesn’t seem to be close enough to Ecuador, here is the recipe to make empanadas de viento right here, at Vassar.
Recip e •1 1/3 all-purpose flour •1 stick cold butter, cubed •1/4 cup cold water •1/4 teaspoon salt •8 to 10 oz. grated cheese (preferably “queso fresco”) •Vegetable oil for frying •White granulated sugar for sprinkling Mix 1 cup of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1 stick of cold butter in a food processor. Immediately after the mixture is incorporated, knead the dough for about 5 minutes or until the butter has dissolved and mixed into the dough. Add 1/4 cup of cold water and continue
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kneading. If the dough is too humid, gradually add the remaining 1/3 cup of flour and continue kneading until smooth. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes under a napkin. Divide the dough into 10 dough balls. Roll out each dough ball with a wooden roller and place about an ounce of queso fresco in the middle of each dough disk. Put water in the borders of each disk and fold the dough in half, pressing the borders with a fork to form the edge of the empanada. Fry the empanadas in hot vegetable oil and sprinkle granulated sugar as soon as you drain the oil from them. Serve immediately and enjoy!
April 7, 2016
OPINIONS
Page 9
The Miscellany News Staff Editorial
Need-blind must remain priority after Hill’s departure A
s she announced to the student body last week, President Catharine “Cappy” Bond Hill is stepping down.ffrom office. While her emailed statement highlighted the best parts of a decade-long presidency, Hill’s eponymous brand of “Cappy-talism” has often been the subject of scrutiny in the past decade, with dissenters arguing that Hill’s business-style approach to administration has served the interests of the trustees over the students. Above any parting compliments or lingering criticisms, however, Hill will be remembered for going against the overwhelmingly standard need-aware policies at peer institutions to switch Vassar back to completely need-blind admissions. Since Hill’s announced departure, many students have been asking the same question: who will fight for a need-blind Vassar after Cappy is gone? Every member of the student body (and most of their parents) knows that a Vassar education isn’t cheap. While Vassar has always provided need-based financial assistance, admissions prior to Hill’s tenure were need-aware, meaning a prospective student’s financial need was on the table during their evaluation and could play into the final admissions decision. While this would only affect a marginal number of applicants, need-aware admissions are one part of a larger system of barriers limiting low-income students’ access to higher education. Hill’s push for socioeconomic diversity comes alongside over 40 other institutions offering need-blind admissions and meeting full demonstrated need of U.S. citizens, but making education universally accessible is an uphill battle that begins in daycare and persists throughout high school. With many public schools supported primarily by local taxes, low-income areas are left with little resources
to cover the core requirements for a diploma, let alone any of the tutoring, college-preparatory programs or one-on-one application assistance often found behind a “strong” applicant. Because of factors mostly outside of Vassar’s control, the socioeconomic mix of the student body has been and continues to be overwhelmingly skewed towards the upper class. Also as a result of such developments, Vassar’s continued responsibility to need-blind admissions and financial aid is critical in fostering socioeconomic diversity in a collegiate student body. Hill’s legacy at Vassar in this regard clearly marks a step in the right direction. According to information compiled by the Office of Institutional Research, since 2006, the portion of incoming freshmen receiving the Pell Grant has jumped from seven percent to 22. The Class of 2019 entered Vassar with an almost unprecedented 62.9 percent of matriculants receiving Vassar College grant aid, compared to the 45.8 percent graduating with the Class of 2010. Most importantly, however, is the nearly 15 percent rise in financial aid applications per class of matriculants. Since Hill’s presidency, more and more high-achieving, low-income students are applying to Vassar and getting in. Still, need-blind admissions isn’t the great equalizer. Once low-income students are signed into the Matriculation Book and factored into the newsletter stats, many find that Vassar’s commitment to equal socioeconomic opportunity wanes. While institutional measures such as the Transitions program are important initiatives for supporting low-income and first-generation students, there are still numerous difficulties these students face throughout their academic careers. Every semester, students pay outrageous prices for textbooks, with no system in
place to subsidize those fees by the administration. Students who cannot travel over breaks are often left on campus without food, reliable transportation to a grocery store, or other basic services. Generally, some critics of need-blind admissions argue that the system superficially values good press and favorable rankings over legitimately caring for low-income students. Such critiques underscore how need-blind admissions are not a panacea for the legacies of inequality that pervade institutions of higher education. The hurdles facing low-income students in a still-vastly upper-middle class environment are significant and remain a key campus issue. Implementing administrative mechanisms to aid with these basic needs should be at the forefront of Vassar’s efforts to maintaining its commitment to socioeconomic diversity. Additionally, it is vital to note that Vassar’s need-blind admissions policy does not apply to transfer and international students. While this is standard at most of Vassar’s peer institutions, it nonetheless underscores the limitations of need-blind admissions. The lack of resources on campus for low-income students, coupled with the inherent shortcomings of many need-blind policies, highlights how far we still have to go as an institution in terms of not only bolstering diversity, but making sure those low-income students are properly cared for. We at The Miscellany News believe that the transition to a new presidency holds great potential for Vassar’s future as an educational institution. While great strides were made during Cappy’s tenure, the College has a long ways to go in terms of fulfilling its responsibility of maintaining a diverse, inclusive and nurturing
environment. One method for ensuring the selection process is imbued with these values is amplifying student voices and the VSA’s influence on these types of decisions. Because the issue of need-blind admissions hits so close to home for many Vassar students, the VSA should have a significant say in any decision regarding need-blind admissions in the future. Accordingly, the student representatives chosen to serve on the President Search Committee should seek to uphold the College’s commitment to making financial aid our highest priority. Student input is crucial to this decision. Going forward, the Board of Trustees and the President Search Committee should seek a candidate committed to furthering Vassar’s mission of increasing educational accessibility and providing opportunities for students from less privileged backgrounds. During this search process and the ongoing debate about the future of need-blind admissions, student voices must be heard, acknowledged and incorporated into whatever decisions end up being made. Need-blind admissions and their subsequent effects on socioeconomic diversity are crucial first steps for creating a more inclusive educational environment. We at The Miscellany News believe that commitment to need-blind admissions and fostering a supportive environment for low-income students must be at the forefront of the selection process for Vassar’s next president. Additionally, the VSA must affirm the College’s decision to go need-blind and acknowledge the obstacles yet to be faced in fostering a conducive learning environment regardless of socioeconomic class. —The Staff Editorial represents the opinions of at least 2/3 of our Editorial Board.
Border patrol union must reverse endorsement of Trump Nick Barone
Opinions Editor
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n Wednesday, March 30, the National Border Patrol Council endorsed Donald Trump for president. The Council serves as the official organization representing U.S. Border Patrol agents, consisting of around 18,000 members–agents and support personnel–according to its website. Though the union “has had a longstanding practice of not endorsing presidential candidates in the primaries,” the statement lauded Trump for being a candidate “who doesn’t embrace political correctness.” Borrowing rhetoric that sounds reminiscent of Trump’s campaign announcement speech, the Council wrote, “If we do not secure our borders, American communities will continue to suffer at the hands of gangs, cartels and violent criminals preying on the innocent” (National Border Patrol Council, “National Border Patrol Council Endorses Donald Trump for President,” 03.30.2016). We’ve seen these rationalizations before. The union’s statement rehashes old, tired arguments of immigrants “stealing” jobs from American citizens, and bringing crime and delinquency with them across the border. As Trump infamously asserted, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” (The Washington Post, “Donald Trump’s ‘Mexican rapists’ rhetoric will keep the Republican Party out of the White House,” 06.17.2015). The parallels of rhetoric between the former host of “Celebrity Apprentice” and a massive government employee labor union are even more jarring than they appear to be. How could a legitimate labor organization possibly endorse someone with platforms as incoherent and absurd as Donald Trump’s? The inanity of the union’s argument should not undermine the endorsement’s underlying toxic and oppressive sentiments. The concluding paragraph of the union’s endorsement reads, “There is no greater physical or economic threat to Americans today than our open
border.” The notion that undocumented immigrants are more likely to be criminals or are in any way harming the nation economically has been thoroughly debunked. The economic argument that is often manipulated to argue for stricter border regulations is particularly erroneous. Immigration has been a boon to industry and economic development in various communities in the United States. As reported by the Economic Policy Institute, the percentage of economic output for foreigners between 2009 and 2011 totaled higher than the percentage of foreigners who actually constitute the U.S. population (14.7 percent vs. 13 percent). Additionally, the vast majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are not criminals. In fact, according to University of Massachusetts sociologist and researcher Bianca Bersani, foreign-born individuals are much less likely to commit crime over the course of their lives. Similarly, Northwestern University researcher Jörg Spenkuch found no correlation between immigration and violent crime (The Washington Post, “Surprise! Donald Trump is wrong about immigrants and crime,” 07.02.2015).
“By endorsing Trump, the border patrol union feeds into cyclical politics of hate and fear-mongering...” Moreover, the National Border Control Council’s statement understates the massive efforts taken over the last 15 years in terms of border safety. As described in a New York Times staff editorial, “Despite the union’s apocalyptic warnings, the border is more militarized than ever, and arrests there are at historic lows. Illegal immigration has been falling for years. More Mexicans are leaving the country than entering. President Obama, far from abandoning immigration enforcement, has deported more peo-
ple—more than two million—more quickly than his predecessors” (The New York Times, “The Border Patrol’s Bizarre Choice,” 04.05.2016). The notion that America has laxed its border control policy is fallacious. The amount of money and resources being poured into border safety contradict the language of the union’s endorsement. The rhetoric used by the union and Trump very overtly comes from a place of ignorance and scapegoating. By endorsing Trump, the border patrol union feeds into cyclical politics of hate and fear-mongering that have dominated conservative discourse since this election cycle began. For Trump, the continuation of his inflammatory statements should not come as a surprise given that his campaign has been imbued with this rhetoric from day one. The National Border Patrol Council is a union designed to protect the interests of border patrol agents in the workplace and ensure that their interests are voiced nationally. Supporting a candidate who was endorsed by a Ku Klux Klan leader, offered to pay the legal fees of a supporter who assaulted a black protester and calling for the cessation of Muslim immigration into the country has absolutely nothing to do with these interests at all. The union’s deliberate act of ignoring and whitewashing the corrosive and offensive remarks made by Trump does not resonate whatsoever with its mission statement. The absurd decision highlights a number of issues within the sociopolitical landscape of the United States, namely the popularity of Donald Trump and the heightened disillusionment among many different groups of voters. Unfortunately, the National Border Patrol Council decided to express this disillusionment through political scapegoating and dehumanization. While I take issue with the manner in which the United States government has handled immigration since the Bush administration, this is not the fault of the patrol officers. Border patrol officials have a responsibility to uphold American law while respecting the fundamental human rights of migrants. The endorsement of Donald Trump flies in the face of this responsibility. Border patrol activity over the last few
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months has additionally reflected the harsh reality and tone of Trump’s violent message. Instances of abuse of power and cruelty have been reported numerous times in recent years. As cited by The New York Times editorial, border patrol agent Lonnie Swartz shot and killed an unarmed child in the back through the border fence on Oct. 10, 2012. While he was the first border patrol agent to be indicted on federal murder charges for a cross-border shooting, 33 deaths as a result of border patrol agent encounters had been reported since 2010. Border patrol has also come under fire in recent years for racial profiling, verbal abuse and excessive force at federal checkpoints on highways near the Mexican border. Different instances of this include accusations that agents repeatedly asked a veteran if the children in his backseat were really his, threatened to use a stun gun on a man after he asked why his car was being searched and approached an individual at a checkpoint and yelled, “How would you like to have a gun pointed at your face?” (The New York Times, “Border Patrol Accused of Profiling and Abuse,” 10.25.2015). The mechanisms of power used by the border patrol are abusive, discriminatory and necessitate reform. However, dismissing the union’s endorsement of Donald Trump as simply the culmination of long-standing prejudice within the system undercuts the heightened legitimacy that this could potentially conjure. The implications this could have on the election this November-especially considering that Trump’s nomination is seeming more and more inevitable each day-should not be ignored. Any act that gives Trump legitimacy should be condemned, especially when coming from an association of federal officials. No organized labor union should give a shred of credibility to Trump’s campaign, especially one that represents officials who hold a great deal of power over the safety, security and wellbeing of undocumented migrants. The National Border Patrol Council should reverse its endorsement and spearhead efforts to prevent violence and abuse among its own ranks, rather than scapegoat and demonize immigrants who are searching for a better life.
OPINIONS
Page 10
April 7, 2016
Hostility between generations of women hurts feminism Emma Jones
Opinions Editor
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illary Clinton’s candidacy has proved to be a divisive issue for feminists, specifically in terms of the generation gap. It is nothing, however, that the country has not dealt with before. Bernie Sanders has garnered widespread support from young women in particular, to the dismay of many “second-wave” feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright. Clinton, meanwhile, appeals to older generations of women. Eight years ago, the rivalry between Clinton and Obama revealed many of the same trends: while women Democrats over 30 tended to side with Clinton, young women rallied behind Obama in large numbers. Today, although the situation is admittedly different in countless ways, the pattern continues, with young women choosing Sanders and the older generation favoring Clinton. Marion Just, a political science professor at Wellesley College, drew a connection from the generational divide among female voters in this to that of the 2008 election. Eight years ago, she was surprised to see widespread support for Obama across the all-female campus, showing a greater concern among young women for a candidate’s ability to actively enforce gender equality than for the candidate’s gender. Today, not surprisingly, this pattern continues. In The Iowa entrance poll, for instance, Sanders amassed 84 percent of the votes of young people under thirty, while a mere 14 percent favored Clinton. Among those aged 30 to 44, Sanders remained the favorable candidate, surpassing Clinton 58 percent to 37 percent. Clinton beat Sanders 58 percent to 35 percent among voters aged 45–64, however, and 69 percent to 26 percent among those over 64. Many established feminist leaders align with these statistics, typically showing staunch support for Clinton. Although this, in itself, is not necessarily problematic, their disparagement
of Sanders enthusiasts has done nothing but harm. Pitting generations of feminists against one another will only weaken both sides. Gloria Steinem, one of the most widely recognized feminist leaders, has frequently vocalized her distress at the younger generation’s lack of enthusiasm for Hillary, writing off young feminists’ support of Sanders as shallow and uninformed. Although she is, of course, entitled to her opinion, insulting the intelligence of young women seems, if nothing else, counterproductive. Steinem, along with Madeleine Albright, introduced Clinton at a rally in New Hampshire. Albright essentially accused female Bernie supporters of disloyalty to their gender, declaring, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other” (The New York Times, “Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright Rebuke Young Women Backing Bernie Sanders,” 02.07.2016). And while I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, I do not believe that voting for Hillary Clinton is the best way to help women. Steinem even went so far as to accuse young women of supporting Sanders in order to meet men. In an interview with talk show host Bill Meyer, she explained, “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie’” (The New York Times). Both Steinem and Albright have received an outpouring of criticism on social media from women who find such rhetoric blatantly offensive to feminist Bernie supporters and to women in general. Many women have called them out for encouraging voters to choose Hillary solely based on her gender, and for undermining the intelligence of women who support Bernie. In the face of ever-growing backlash, Steinem admitted that she had “misspoke[n],” apologizing for “what’s been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics” (The New York Times). Sure enough, in 2008, female Obama sup-
porters received much of the same scorn from Steinem. In a debate with Melissa Harris-Lacewell during the 2008 presidential race, Steinem urged Obama advocates to consider the limitations of another male president, arguing, “I think one learns a lot from parallels, and so it would be interesting to try to project what would have happened to Barack Obama...if he had been a female” (“Race and Gender in Presidential Politics: A Debate Between Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris-Lacewell,” 01.14.2008). While this is a thought-provoking comparison, it does not necessarily establish Obama–or, eight years later, Sanders–as the less “feminist” choice. Indisputably, Steinem has done immeasurable amount of good for feminism and for women. Her snide comments regarding Sanders supporters do not discount her years of activism, journalism and leadership. Her regard for young women whose opinions do not align with hers, however, needs to change. Of course, the liberal voters cannot be divided cleanly into groups based on age and gender alone. As always, it’s more complicated than that. At this point in the race, however–especially in light of Steinem’s recent commentary– it is more crucial than ever to focus on closing the increasing divide between generations of liberal women. Clinton herself has showed a greater willingness to reach out to young women voters during this election cycle than she did in 2008, which is certainly an improvement. Hopefully, her more scornful proponents will soon follow in her footsteps. Similar to the disdainful commentary of staunch Clinton supporters, the “Bernie Bro” myth, concocted by pro-Clinton journalists, implies that a refusal to stand with Clinton has nothing to do with her politics, but is simply an act of sexism. Slate Magazine defines the “Bernie Bro” as a “white, male Bernie Sanders supporter who haunts the Internet comment
section,” who has often “been spotted orchestrating pile-ons on Hillary Clinton’s Facebook page” (Slate Magazine, “Everyone is Wrong About the Bernie Bros,” 02.03.2016). Although it is necessary to address the underlying sexism of many of Clinton’s adversaries, aligning all Sanders supporters with uninformed, male, Clinton-bashing misogynists is not the way to do it. The blind assumption that Bernie’s support is based mainly on sexism is not only inherently sexist itself, but also hurts feminism and everything it stands for. That is not to say that sexism has not played a part in constructing the Clinton-Sanders dichotomy, or that Clinton deserves the intense, often petty scrutiny which she receives. There is certainly some level of discomfort with the fact that Clinton is a woman among many of her opposers, even those who consider themselves liberal. Young, liberal women are not taking feminism’s victories for granted in their rejection of Clinton. On the contrary, they are taking responsibility for themselves and for the future of feminism. I have no doubt that the same women who wish to see Sanders in office today, like those who stood with Obama in 2008, are immensely appreciative of all that Gloria Steinem and her contemporaries have accomplished. The difference lies not in the two generations’ visions for the future, but the methods that they believe will get us to that point. Clinton may make a more fitting figurehead for a progressive, feminist America, but, as I’m sure Steinem herself would agree, there are more important qualities to focus on in a leader than appearance and gender. Although electing Clinton would be symbolically significant, a Sanders presidency would be more beneficial for women in the long run. Although, apparently, “the boys are with Bernie,” it is time to accept that women are too; and they are there not for “the boys,” but for themselves.
TIRC must consider community input on climate change Vassar College Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign
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n last week’s issue of The Miscellany News, the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign detailed the inefficacy of the Campus Investor Responsibility Committee (CIRC), which no longer carries out its original mandate and in fact delays the voicing of student concerns through bureaucracy. We also publicized the rejection of our three specific demands for the Trustee Investor Responsibility Committee’s (TIRC) which we presented at our meeting with it in March (The Miscellany News, “TIRC Stifles Activism on Climate Change,” 03.31.2016). Meeting with the trustee committee, we witnessed once again one voice dominating the rest. Christianna Wood ’81, the chair of the TIRC and an investments/financial analyst, is and has been consistently vocally opposed to fossil fuel divestment. In our meeting with the TIRC we witnessed her opinion regularly overshadowing others’ during the discussion. Although she has spoken on issues of sustainable capitalism and is involved in organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative, which “promotes the use of sustainability reporting as a way for organizations to become more sustainable and contribute to a sustainable global economy,” her repeated attempts at diverting the fossil fuel campaign to engage in more conservative measures such as shareholder activism have delayed our campaign by providing the semblance of an alternative. Why such measures, including lobbying politicians, are ineffective has already been rebutted by the campaign (see The Miscellany News, “Divestment Campaign Fuels Campus Environmental Efforts,” Vol. CXLVIII, No. 13, 02.18.2016). The TIRC is composed of four other members: Henry Johnson ’88, Debra Treyz ’74, William Plapinger ’74 and President Catharine Hill. Johnson, the chairman of the trustee Investments Committee and an investment manager, was not present at our meeting. This January, he became an Executive Vice President and Vice Chairman of Wealth Management at the Northern Trust Corporation, a “leading provider of wealth management, asset servicing, asset
management and banking to corporations, institutions, affluent families and individuals” (Business Wire, “Henry P. Johnson Joins Northern Trust,” 01.11.2016). He has also been engaged in arts, educational and cultural institutions such as the New York Botanical Garden, the Met Museum, the New York Public Library, etc. Treyz, currently a managing director, has spent over 30 years working in several roles at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and JPMorgan Private Bank. There, she has helped “wealthy families and individuals develop wealth strategies to meet their very personal and often complex international objectives” (JP Morgan Chase, “JPMorgan Private Bank names Debra Treyz Head of Business in Europe, Middle East, and Africa,” 07.30.2002). She is also a founding member of the New York branch of the Society of Estate and Trust Practitioners, and a member of the New York Bankers Association. Plapinger is a lawyer associated with the firm Sullivan & Cromwell, whose practice focuses on debt and equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and matters of corporate governance. In our meeting, he fielded a new argument against our efforts to push for divestment by asserting that the governance of the Board of Trustees had to be respected. This meant that the full board would not officially consider our proposal, nor meet directly with the students of the campaign, until the TIRC had approved the proposal, which in turn must first be approved by the CIRC. However, as we have documented in the previous article, the CIRC no longer functions as it should. It no longer actively advises the TIRC on issues of social responsibility, nor is in practice a committee where students, faculty, alumni and administrators are equal in power and voice. The trustees’ insistence on an uncompromising adherence to their governance structure has completely stalled the campaign. Moreover, we challenge the composition of the TIRC, as well as its membership overlap with the Investment Committee. The TIRC is meant to be a body which advises on the ethical and social aspects of the investment of our endowment. In our informal exchanges with trust-
ees not on the TIRC, they have maintained that they defer to the “expertise” of the trustees who sit on the committee on matters of divestment. Yet, when there is a separate committee which is in fact responsible for handling investments, why are the “expert” trustees who sit on the TIRC financial analysts, investment managers and bankers? Instead, should the committee not be composed of trustees with specific experience in, and a sensitivity to social justice, ethics and the political ramifications of the Board’s decisions? What is perhaps the most damning point is that during our meeting, Plapinger himself acknowledged the fact that Vassar is only directly invested in 0-1 fossil fuel corporations at any time, depending on the year. The trustees recognize that the economic impact of divesting from direct investments would be insignificant, meaning their opposition to the prospect is purely ideological. This ideological opposition seems to be based on the fallacious idea that the school can “remain neutral” on political, economic and social issues. There is an expressed reluctance for the Board to “take sides” on behalf of Vassar, based on the misguided belief that inaction equals neutrality. In fact, the trustees have already made the decision that our college can be funded by profits made from the destruction of the environment and the endangering of lives. They have decided that maximizing the return on our investments trumps considering how that money is made by the fossil fuel industry. By investing, they have already come down on the side of coal, oil and gas. It is also necessary to add that the urgent need of eliminating fossil fuels from our energy systems to combat climate change transcends politics, an argument stressed recently by philosophy professor Jeffrey Seidman. Professor Seidman pointed out, ‘Climate change is regarded as a ‘political’ issue in America only because one of the two major parties has made denying climate science an ideological requirement. But there is no room for reasonable, well-informed disagreement that climate
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
change is real, that it is anthropogenic, that the consequences of failing to limit it to two degrees will likely be catastrophic for humanity and the planet, and that doing so will require keeping around 80% of existing fossil fuel reserves in the ground’ (The Miscellany News, ‘Upcoming Divestment Referendum Ignites Climate Debate’, 03.31.2016). What marks fossil fuel divestment out is the fact that failing to do everything we can to fight climate change may lead to a catastrophic upending of human society on a larger scale than any other injustice we may fail to address or divest from. The ramifications for the trustees’ inaction on this issue are far greater than any other injustices they may excuse in their investments, because in addition to the social injustices they perpetrate, fossil fuel corporations threaten the continued existence of the entire Earth. At the end of our meeting, we presented the TIRC with a petition signed by over 130 alumnae/i spanning seven decades of classes and asked to take a photo of this acceptance. Intending to show our alumnae/i supporters that their concerns had been recognized by the trustees, we were surprised when Plapinger refused to take the photo with us. After a tense moment, President Hill offered to accept the petition in the trustees’ stead. When the chair of the Board of Trustees refuses to even have a photo taken of him speaking with students and accepting an alumnae/i petition, how can this group claim to have the best interests of the school and its students in mind? What are they afraid of—appearing to be receptive to the Vassar community? It has become apparent to us that at the heart of this institution which aims to foster critical thinking and awareness of social justice lies an undemocratic and closed group of elites who have lost touch with the real concerns of students. It is imperative that the trustees open themselves to hearing the voices of students as well as faculty and alumnae/i, especially when they challenge its status quo, before they completely forget by whom they are entrusted.
April 7, 2016
OPINIONS
Politicization necessary for effective VSA Ramy Abbady VSA President
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he VSA has certainly not been apolitical in recent years, despite the claims of many candidates in Spring Elections who want to “go back” to such a time. Calls for depoliticization are misguided because they fail to take into account that the VSA has never been apolitical because “neutrality” as it relates to politics is the means for upholding the status quo. Furthermore, the issues that candidates have called for discussion on are far from being “apolitical.” Title IX, accessibility of physical, mental, and financial resources, and other issues candidates have brought up are some of the most political issues of our time. There are endless examples that show the VSA’s political nature over the years. In 2008, a campaign was undertaken to remove Coca Cola products that involved a vote of VSA Council as part of the initiative. The resolution to “Kick Coke,” as the initiative was called, passed the VSA Council and was met with a large backlash. The timeline of events is well-documented in The Miscellany News Archives and I recommend searching for further information online to get a better picture of that situation. In my own time at Vassar, the VSA has been anything but apolitical. During my first month at Vassar, the 27th VSA Council denied funding to MeChA to host a conference. At MeChA’s appeal to the VSA Council, the org’s leaders expressed frustration at the oppressive past and present of the VSA, and a Council member told those leaders to unlearn feeling oppressed by the VSA. How is such a comment apolitical? This was one of my first impressions of the VSA, though as a first-year student I couldn’t fully understand the series of events I was hearing about through the grapevine. That same year, the VSA Council endorsed proposals to turn the VSA Executive Board positions into workstudy positions and to create a social consciousness academic requirement. The former was aimed at increasing the accessibility of student government positions to low-income students and the second was aimed at combating a lack of knowledge among the student body of the significant barriers marginalized students face in
their day-to-day lives. It is easy to see how both of these proposals, which sought to fight oppression, are highly political. During my sophomore year, when I joined the VSA Council as the President of Raymond House, we began significant work on the Gender Neutral Bathroom Initiative. As more and more states, cities and other localities pass laws that specifically seek to prevent trans and nonbinary people from using the bathroom they feel most comfortable in, how can this possibly be seen as apolitical?
“...we took a stance of combating our previous politics of complacency and being bystanders to oppression.” Contrary to claims that the VSA has refused to talk about sexual assault on campus, we have always been involved in such discussions in my time on Council. The 28th Council created a detailed flowchart for the Title IX reporting process that was then updated and further disseminated by the 29th Council. The 29th VSA Council, on which I was the VP for Operations, actively aimed to provide support to activist organizations during a time of intense campus and national climate. We provided supplies, transportation and funding for organizations engaged in protests and other forms of resistance for racial justice. The long process of restructuring the VSA has also been incredibly political. During my first year at Vassar, a group of student activists specifically called for an external review of the VSA to determine its faults and make recommendations for action, particularly noting the role the VSA had played in perpetuating oppression against identity orgs. As VP for Operations, I undertook the project of overseeing this external review and as President, I worked closely with the current VP for Operations, Ruby Pierce, to use this review to frame our restructur-
ing process. The VSA has caused significant hurt in the past to the most marginalized students of campus, including Black students, trans students, women, low-income students, disabled students, Middle Eastern students, Jewish students and many others. By “becoming political,” as many are fond of saying, the current VSA Council, the 30th, finally acknowledged this oppressive history and sought to rectify it moving forward. At the beginning of the year, we adopted guiding principles that sought to center anti-racism and intersectional feminism in our work. That is not at all to say that by adopting these principles we solved everything. However, it was and is an important step towards creating a socially just student government that empowers and supports students that have been marginalized by society, Vassar and the VSA. This Council has certainly not always succeeded in this mission and has in fact failed on several occasions; but we are the first VSA to even consider doing this work. On a final note, I would like to address the incredibly incorrect claims that an apolitical VSA would have prevented the BDS vote. This is false for the reason that the VSA must consider any and all pieces of legislation brought forth by students. That some BDS proponents used the VSA’s official stance of anti-racism as a reason to encourage support of the resolution does not at all change the procedural obligation we were under. This year, the VSA did not go from apolitical to political; rather, we were finally honest about the fact that the VSA is, by its very nature, a political institution. Furthermore, by adopting principles of anti-racism and intersectional feminism as foundational to our mission for the year, we took a stance of combating our previous politics of complacency and being bystanders to oppression. There is still significant work to be done, as there always is when one commits to advocating for a more just society, and I know that the first VSA Senate will tackle these issues right from the start. But “depoliticization” should not be part of such a conversation. Rather, I suggest the Senate consider repoliticization, to affirm this year’s guiding principles and create additional principles by which the VSA can combat oppression. Complacency is no longer an option.
Autism Speaks diminishes lived experience Jesser Horowitz
A
Columnist
pril has come. It’s rainy. It’s spring. It’s supposedly warm. For some people, it might contain a special event, like a birthday or an anniversary. But for those of us on the spectrum, April is a time in which our identities are under nearly constant attack, during which we consistently feel the need to justify our own existence. For those of you who are unaware, April is “Autism Awareness Month,” a time when organizations seeking to better lives of autistic individuals spend considerable resources to rally public support. In order to support these efforts people often wear blue or share vague, meaningless Facebook posts showing “solidarity.” At the center of it all is Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks was founded in 2005 by Bob and Suzanne Wright after the diagnosis of their grandchild. Currently, Autism Speaks is the largest autism-related organization in the world and, among the autistic community, by far the most despised. Autism Speaks condescends autistic people. Instead of seeing themselves as community members that wish to further the interests of the whole, organization leaders view themselves as above the community, helping those who cannot possibly help themselves. They are the saviors that will rescue these hopeless imbeciles. Their very name is emblematic of this problem: “Autism Speaks,” a play on the idea that many on the spectrum cannot speak. Of course, us autistics are completely incapable of making our opinions, our thoughts, our interests known in any way and are in need of non-autistics to translate for us. The distasteful, condescending logo sends another powerful, ignorant message to the public: the name implies that everyone on the spectrum is nonverbal, which is obviously not true. Communication means a lot more than speech. We have accepted that, for the most part, when it comes to the deaf community. They speak through sign language. They were
not always allowed to communicate this way, but it is now accepted by most people. But when it comes to autism, there is an idea that if you cannot communicate verbally, you are a “low-functioning autistic” and are in some way broken. Autism Speaks moves forward with this misconception. And therefore, it is their goal to cure autism. This is not something most autistic people want. Some might be confused by that. If autism is a disability, why wouldn’t people want a cure to be found? But it must be asked, what is a disability? According to the dictionary, it is “a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses or activities.” Would autism be included in that definition? I’m not sure. Certainly, there are those on the spectrum who do not speak. But is their ability to communicate limited in some way? I would argue no. Rather, society’s ability to understand them is limited. Therefore, I would argue that the disability is not autism, but ignorance; and that the victim is not the individual, but the world at large. Some might ask, “But doesn’t autism make life more difficult? And, if it makes life more difficult, shouldn’t we be searching for a cure?” For some, this may be a compelling argument. After all, isn’t it best to make life more convenient, easier? Isn’t a cure the best way to move past societal ignorance? I would compare autism to homosexuality. Homosexuality is not considered a disease anymore. But at one time, in fact a very recent time, it was considered a form of mental illness that ought to be treated. Today most people know better than to compare homosexuality to a disease, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who described homosexuality as a mental impairment that prevents people from getting aroused by the opposite gender. Yes, there may be ignorant bigots who still claim this, but most of them aren’t quite medical experts, to say the least. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that homosexuality can cause an individual great suffering. Although that’s not inherent in homo-
sexuality, it is frequently a result of societal intolerance. But that is not a reason to attempt to cure homosexuality. Why are we trying to fix people who aren’t broken? Why don’t we instead put an end to the institutions in place that cause intolerance? At Vassar at the very least, shouldn’t this be universally agreed upon? A cure for homosexuality and a cure for autism is cut from the same eugenicist cloth. Autism Speaks uses this cloth a produce a society of hatred and ignorance towards autistics. This cloth is exemplified in the fear-mongering rhetoric used by Autism Speaks in its marketing techniques. Its advertisements demean and degrade autistic people. Take, for example, these excerpts from a video Autism Speaks produced titled “I Am Autism”: “I am Autism ... I know where you live, and guess what? I live there too ... I hover around all of you ... I work faster than pediatric aids, cancer and diabetes combined...and if you are happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails ... Your money will fall into my hands ... I don’t sleep ... I will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend a temple, a birthday party, a public park without a struggle, without embarrassment, without pain ... You have no cure for me ... I am still winning, and you are scared, and you should be ... You ignored me, and that was a mistake.” Note that instead of focusing on the children, these excerpts focus on the way that Autism Speaks intends to scare parents into giving them money. They create a sense of urgency. Autism Speaks is not a representation of autistic voices, they are a sham, intended to steal money from scared parents. Autism Speaks is, at best, the most elaborate con ever created. At worst, it is a hate group designed to discredit those with autism. They demonize those they claim to represent in order to steal your money. And they use that money to cure an imaginary disease, to fix people who don’t need fixing and to spread more ignorance and fear. Autistic people have no need for Autism Speaks. We can speak for ourselves.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
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Word on the street Who should replace Cappy? “Ellen Degeneres.” — Hannah Mittman ’19
“Ezra Koenig.” — Patrick Tanella ’19
“Ed, Edd and Eddy.” —Jimmy Pavlick ’18
“Lisa Kudrow, so she’ll come back.” — Lucy Ellman ’19
“Franz Kafka.” — Rachel Elson ’19
“I already have.” —Ramy Abbady ’16
Zander Bashaw, Humor & Satire Editor Evelyn Frick, Columnist Ashley Pecorelli, Photographer
OPINIONS
Page 12
April 7, 2016
Campus rhetoric needs to respect academic freedom Stewart E. Rothman ’80 Guest Columnist
M
y first Vassar paper was returned with more red ink than black. The Intro Philosophy topic concerned the methodology of the Socratic dialogs. Professor Tillman’s main criticism was written in bold: “You nod to and then ignore the topic assigned!” Indeed, I had. I wanted to write about Plato’s thesis not the method. In my senior year, controversy erupted over William F. Buckley, Jr.’s selection as commencement speaker. Mr. Buckley’s opponents’ critique of the process quickly devolved into an address of his conservative views. Mr. Buckley didn’t miss the logical leap but in a New York Times column he also departed from the point branding my class as “ferocious illiterates.” Mr. Buckley’s fit of pique masked the valid point put to me by Professor Tillman: Opinions matter; in context. The controversy over BDS proposals at Vassar have roots in President Hill’s rejection of the American Studies Association’s (ASA) boycott of Israeli academicians and institutions, and the open letters by 39 Vassar faculty and 66 “Fairness to Israel” alums. All suffer from this same error ignoring the context: the liberal arts mission of Vassar. Each, instead, seek to manipulate the institutional forums. Like Mr. Buckley’s ill-tempered column, they obscure the threshold issue. This degrades the institutional forums and undermines their own epistolary purposes. The Palestinian-Israeli conflicts are difficult to parse, much less resolve. Academic freedom and educational discourse, however, are clear cut. They must remain apolitical to be effective. These activists seek to manipulate the forum. Lost in this maelstrom are the functions of the College, its faculty and Student Government which should be limited to fostering a forum for the full and free expression of all sides of the de-
“Get a Clue”
bate. An institutional voice drowns debate defeating that mission. The VSA’s BDS resolution should not be entitled to any more credence than expressions by any other 22 Vassar students. The mandate of Vassar’s administration, faculty and alumnae is to foster the mission of the College as a forum and catalyst for educational, emotional, political and cultural discussion and growth. The administration’s rejection of the ASA and VSA boycotts actually promote the freedom of all students and faculty of the College in expressing their individual opinions in the forums and facilities of the College which shouldn’t be manipulated for any political agenda. Strong polemics should withstand close inquiry, scrutiny and critique without institutional imprimaturs. The institutional strength of Vassar lies in its ability to afford an honest, fair and open forum for scholarship and debate. The Administration has studiously avoided addressing, much less adopting, any position in the thorny Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Rather, the position is limited to the rejection of institutional participation in economic and academic boycotts which take such positions; these are political acts incongruous with the institutional mission and antithetical to academic freedom. All opinions matter, but, in context, the College’s role as a forum for the free exchange and critical examination of those opinions matters more. An institutional stance on these underlying issues is not the College’s function. It is hard to argue, as the ASA and dissenting Vassar faculty nonetheless try, that BDS boycotts or excommunication of educational institutions or academicians somehow promotes the academic mission. The VSA resolutions implicitly opined this same unfathomable position. These arguments ignore the context and fail on that threshold issue. The “Open Letter” by 39 Vassar Professors is
most disturbing in its pretensions to academic freedom. Their premise that President Hill’s institutional policy “will [somehow] have a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas and opinions on our campus and across the broader society” is a non-sequitur. Really? How so? The answer is never offered and the premise abruptly abandoned in favor of professing their political views with an “ends justify these means” polemic. They are individually not institutionally entitled to this position. The cause of academic freedom is transubstantiated into the stifling of differing voices by closing the door to the halls of debate. As teachers, they leave academic freedom in the dust of their abrupt thematic turn. The VSA board has learned a poor lesson from these masters. These arguments begin with “a nod at” academic freedom and then ignore it to espouse a political position. Professor Tillman, where are you (and your red pen) now! Academic freedom requires fostering, not hindering, the free flow and exchange of all ideas. In academia, arguments should only be won by their ability to withstand critical communal scrutiny. Boycotts conflate pedagogy with policy, serving neither end but dis-serving Vassar’s core institutional values. Manipulation of the College’s resources is a crutch which is self-defeating and misses the target. The ASA boycott is a good object lesson for Vassar demonstrating the corrosive effects on the institution when politics is allowed to subjugate context in a shift from the core function of promoting scholarship. The recent BDS proposals, the faculty “Open Letter” and the FTI alumnae letter all suffer from their inability to resist getting lost in the thicket of the politics while ignoring the threshold institutional context. Neither “truth” nor “justice,” as anyone may see it, are directly at stake. Instead, the issue is the College’s institutional role pro-
viding an open forum to address these issues untinged by institutional positions. The sequella of this institutional policy demonstrates that a vigorous (albeit not always healthy) debate was engendered. Institutional imprimaturs, however, would have cast intimidation into the arguments fouling the halls of debate. All these differing arguments owe their ability to voice their views in open College forums to the very principles of academic freedom these activists ironically seek to contest and contort. On campuses, the freedom of ideas is the prime directive. Vassar has a tradition of academic freedom which demands that all may freely expose their views to critical inquiry and critique; no matter how “wrong” or arguable they may be thought to be. Only then they can they be examined, assessed and assayed. That is how to train young minds in critical thinking. It is a self-correcting exercise. Demonstrably false or weak positions are exposed and deposed in a forum which lays bare their inherent weaknesses. Varying perspectives can be evaluated by, rather than imposed upon, students who can reject those which cannot withstand scrutiny and refine to those that can without exclusion, censure, excommunication or intimidation. It’s the Socratic methodology Professor Tillman assigned me to evaluate! Debates will not be won by imposition nor by silencing points of view. Courage in one’s convictions do not need such tactics. They are antithetical to ANY notion of academic freedom. When Professor Tillman reviewed that paper with me, he did two things I have never forgotten. First, he returned his royalty on the required textbook. Next, he told me something that has stuck with me far longer than those funds. He said, “Effective polemics requires intellectual integrity...a winning argument which is beside the point is not a winning argument at all.”
The Miscellany Crossword by Tyler Fultz
A murder has taken place in the Clue mansion! Can you find the murderer, the murder location, and the murder weapon? Email tyfultz@vassar.edu with your answer.
ACROSS
44. Uber sad 46. Old Tokyo 1. Inkling 47. Ewe called? 5. __ Madrid 48. Pistol 9. Word after “Supermarket” or “Chimney” 50. Job availabilities at the spa? 14. Spill the beans 59. Getting older 15. “Spring Awakening” character 60. Common deficiency 16. Singes 61. Kelly or Spelling 17. Certain superfood often found in 62. “Video Killed the __ Star,” which crosswords ironically was the first video ever shown on Get a Clue MTV Tyler Fultz 18. “Glade __-ins” 63. Drug cop 19. The Gallagher brothers (not the ones with ACROSS the watermelons and the sledgehammers!) 64. Listen 1. hitInkling 20. A Revolutionary War play that has the 65. Snuck three hour mark and just won’t end? 66. High school musical 5. __ Madrid 23. Original 67. Common amalgams of foliage 9. Word after "Supermarket" or 24. Get rid of, perhaps "Chimney" 25. Ink, for short DOWN 28. Shirt style for Dude Love or many 14. Spill the beans Serenaders 1. Not Fren., Span., Rom., or Port. 15. "Spring2. Art Awakening" character 31. Far out Alaska place __ 35. Middle Deece line offering 16. Singes3. Vigor 37. Parallel of 12-down Come together often found 17. Certain4. superfood 38. World War II film starring Alexander 5. “__ anger” ina crosswords Knox, or a fitting center theme answer in 6. Woods or Magazine murder-mystery crossword puzzle? Conf. represented by FGCU in March 18. "Glade7.__-ins" 41. Unusual family dinner participant Madness 19. The Gallagher brothers (not 42. Quality of a Republican candidate? 8. Orton, Rhodes, and Dibiase stable...or a the ones with the watermelons 43. Film and Drama college lineage 9. “Great __!” and the sledgehammers!) Answers to last week’s puzzle 10. With an exclamation point, the group 20. A Revolutionary play that that brought usWar “Wake Me Up Before You has hitGo-Go” the three hour mark 11. Soothe and just won't end? 12. Andrews or Brockovich 23. Original 13. “HEY! YOU THERE!” Except quietly. Take the APs all over again (sorry 24. Get rid21.of, perhaps Raymond) 25. Ink, for22.short Line before yours 28. Shirt style for Island Dudewhere Love or 25. Pacific Nuku’alofa is the capital many Serenaders 26. Love 31. Far out27.Alaska place Principle 35. Middle29. Deece line offering 3 after 30-down 30. See 29-down 37. Parallel of 12-down
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HUMOR & SATIRE
April 7, 2016
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Breaking News From the desk of Zander Bashaw, Humor & Satire Editor Yoplait attempting to draw in more health-conscious consumers with latest “kale on the bottom” yogurt line What to do with your Misc Need blind: the presidential after reading every last word candidate nobody expected Talya Phelps
Multi-Purpose Writer
E
ver wonder what to do with the Misc once you’ve dutifully read each page and written to your local legislator about the tampon initiative? Here are some options you can try. 1. Toilet paper
ent materials; a strand of napkin says “I may not walk 500 miles for you, but I’ll walk to the Retreat,” while a piece of dental floss ribbon sends the message “We’re only friends because you’re on the Enhanced meal plan and sometimes you swipe for me at UpC.” 6. Wall decoration
Perhaps a bit trite, but when you tire of Vassar’s skimpy single-ply “environmentally friendly” rubbish, just tear off a chunk of the Misc for all your butt-related needs. Or, alternatively, for your tampon needs until your local legislator emails you back. 2. Papier mache
Nothing makes you feel like a Pinterest housewife more than weird unnecessary crafting. We at the Misc like to start with two glasses of white wine before the creation commences. Good papier mache projects always involve balloons, so we blow a few up, slap some newspaper on them, take a quick break to weep about your ungrateful children and then get in there with some acrylic paint. If the design is intricate enough, it can distract us from our failing marriages! 3. Blanket
There’s a lot of hype nowadays about nonsense like “shams” and “duvet covers,” but we at the Misc advocate for a return to the basics—and what says “simple elegance” better than a pile of newspaper? Don’t be alarmed if you wake up to the noise of crumpling paper and find yourself covered in black ink; consider the free tattoos an added bonus!
Creating a pleasant living environment is important, even when you’re stuffed into a oneroom triple that definitely used to be a closet. The Misc interior decorating team has collaborated with the Misc Pinterest housewife team to recommend cutting your newspaper into interesting shapes and slapping it onto your wall like the sad fool that you are. Before you host a party, take this idea one step further and cover literally everything in newspaper to avoid Svedka soaking into the sweater Grandma Agnes knitted you. If you’re feeling risky, hang the paper up with tacks and potentially incur the wrath of ResLife. 7. Snack
Before Vassar implements its new dining plan, admin (as is their custom) will probably feel obliged to make us suffer for a while; we’re anticipating a period when there’s simply no Deece food available at all. As a voracious reader hungry for knowledge, what better way is there to supplement your diet than with a dose of the Misc? While the Misc is delicious plain, we recommend cutting it up and topping it with cheese, fruits or a sprig of rosemary. Don’t rule out using the Misc as dessert either—simply shred it and sprinkle it into a pint of Haagen-Dazs for some high-fiber “Misc-cream.” Your taste buds (and Dining Bucks budget) will thank you!
Evelyn Frick
Bored of Elections
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up Vassholes! My name is Evelyn Frick (she/ her/hers), and as a staff columnist at The Miscellany News, I wanted to use this very important platform/napkin to discuss something I have found troubling. As the VSA Elections are coming up quickly, I have seen lots of people campaigning for positions like “Senator of Strategic Planning,” “Chair of Objectifying Titles” or even the coveted position of “Prime Minister of Going to Acrop Drunk.” But one essential position is up for grabs for which there is yet to be a candidate. Night after night I have tossed and turned, anxiously wondering who would be fit to serve our community in this role. So, I have finally decided to step up to the plate like Michael Jordan in his wildly over-confident and short-lived baseball career, and announcing my intention to run for Vassar College President 2017! As the next president of Vassar, a crucial moment for the college and its legacy would be my first action: creating a new, wacky nickname for myself! I was thinking of something like Eppy, as an homage to Cappy, and also as a promise that my policies will be enacted quickly, like a swift stab of epinephrine to the outer thigh. Another major initiative of my presidency will be to stop demolition of the remaining shell of Mudd Chemistry. I have heard so many first
years complaining, “I am so sad that I never got to go inside Mudd!” Well now is your chance! My goal is to leave Mudd in its current ghostof-its-former-self state, so there are plenty of opportunities for ~artsy~ and ~original~ selfies. Just make sure you’re up to date on your tetanus vaccines, kiddos. Moreover, I plan on converting the president’s home into a frat house to shake things up! Out with the Kappa and in with the Epsilon, as I always say! (Or just started saying right now.) Why not get to know me better AND have the esteemed privilege of vomiting in the president’s bathroom! I hope you notice that I am appropriating and modifying bro culture, which is only a small component of my larger feminist agenda! Living in Strong House, I have seen the feminist Promised Land, people. It is a vision of the world with a supply of tampons and Pamprin raining from the heavens like manna. Women from every background living together peacefully, like a reverse Tower of Babel. What was I talking about again? Oh, lady power, right! Most importantly, there are powerful female leaders. So who would you rather have as president, another boring, white, straight, old dude? Exactly. Frick the Patriarchy! Vote Evelyn for Vassar College President. (This message is approved by the Committee for the Shameless Self-Promotion of Evelyn Frick.)
4. Hat
5. Shitty wrapping paper
Nothing sends a friend the message “You’re okay, I guess” than a birthday or holiday present wrapped with a copy of the Misc. Raise or lower the level of apathy by tying a bow with differ-
8. Oracle
College life is hard, and sometimes you need a little divine intervention. When you’re wondering whether you’ll pass that test or get a text back from that cutie, try using your copy of the Misc as an Ouija board of sorts; simply close your eyes, pray to each Humor columnist in turn and then let the spirits guide your hand around the page. Circle letters and words where the supernatural vibes feel strongest. In our tests, fortunes have been a tad cryptic; notable answers included “VSA tampon theater initiative divestment yes,” “gentrification womp lax womp,” and “rwdsidrnmidjs;” but decoding them has the added benefit of strengthening your communication skills. Go forth and tell the future!
Ashley Pecorelli/The Miscellany News
At Vassar, it’s important to stay ahead of the style curve, so why not start a new trend with an avant-garde chapeau? We recommend folding up your copy of the Misc into one of those boat-looking numbers. The truly bold could even try origami-ing their way to a new baseball cap or a beanie, complete with pom-pom. Disclaimer: we warn against wearing your new cap out in the rain—or the April snow showers, if Mother Nature is being kinky.
Intramural Athletes Association demands to be taken seriously Zander Bashaw, Has-Been To the Vassar community, We as the Intramural Athletes Association want to address the current campus climate regarding intramural athletics. We’re very disappointed to see so much snow around this time of year, which is physically preventing us from starting our outdoor spring season. It seems like the whole world has turned a cold shoulder to our right to petty competition. We demand that Vassar do something about this icy atmosphere around us. Apart from the climate itself, our athletes find themselves routinely feeling like we get the worst of both the athletic and non-athletic worlds. We face ridicule from non-athletes, who criticize our unflinching ability to play wiffleball as ruthlessly as possible, but also from those who so offensively call themselves “real ath-
letes.” We prefer to call them “Registered Collegiate Players.” These players tell us that we are washed up has-beens from high school, clinging to a time when we were relevant athletes. We believe that this type of rhetoric generates a dangerous climate for our barely upright identity, an identity that is currently only kept afloat by opportunities to knock each other over in Walker twice a week. By publishing this letter in the well-frequented newspaper, we hope to encourage the Vassar community at large to take intramural athletes as seriously as we take ourselves. We now intend to lay out the physical and mental adjustments that our campus must make to repair the damage our athletes have sustained in addition the injuries we give each other bi-weekly. Firstly, we must dispel the attitude that intramural athletes are merely old high school sports
MVPs who couldn’t take it to the collegiate level. The reality is that some of us won the most improved player (MIP) for our high schools, and others got little playing time at all and have never recovered from that. Some of us were merely just looking for a way to compete in the most simultaneously brutal and petty manner since Monopoly. Intramural sports has already brought together people who like to argue with student referees completing work study. We also hope to bridge the gap between the Registered Collegiate Players and our intramural athletes. We believe that the interscholastic teams could stand to gain from our gym-class hero mentality, and that we could learn how to physically play the sports we so desperately want to be good at. A good starter for this liaison could be to connect with the Ultimate Frisbee team,
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
who represent a perfect middle ground between intramural and intercollegiate athletics. They may also be the athletic group that takes themselves the third-most seriously, behind only us and Quidditch. In addition to attitude changes, we implore the college to finance a 57 million-dollar project to build an elevated, entirely glass sports pavilion using tops of the four quad dorms as a foundation. Along with these improved facilities, we hope to be able to subsidize uniforms and televised coverage of our own Premier League Soccer (patent pending). We firmly believe that through a concentrated effort, we can bring unbridled competitiveness and sap the fun out of every sport and fake sport alike. -The Intramural Athletes Association
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April 7, 2016
Food Chain tackles serious topics with comedic twist Matt Stein Reporter
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tressed out from that midterm grade? Panicking about student government? Well don’t! Just laugh. And as “The Food Chain” by Nicky Silver shows, comedy is in practically everything—even the most controversial topics. On Thursday, April 7 at 6 p.m., April 8 at 8 p.m., and April 9 at 2 and 7 p.m., “The Food Chain” will be performed in the Susan Stein Shiva. The show is being produced by the Philaletheis Society, Vassar’s oldest student theatre organization that recently celebrated their 150th anniversary. It is the group’s first production of the spring semester. The production is being directed by Ari Sacristan-Benjet ’18 and stage managed by Justas Rodarte ’19. “The Food Chain” is a comedy-filled with
sex, food, love and hilarious characters. It follows newlywed Amanda, an anorexic poet played by Yvette Segan ’19, who calls a crisis hotline worker, Bea, played by Miranda Amey ’19, about her missing husband, Ford, played by Gideon Taffee ’19, before he suddenly reappears. Simultaneously, Serge, a vain runway model played by James Haxton ’16, waits for his lover when a former fling, Otto, played by Aiden Lewy ’18, also reappears. Eventually, all of the characters’ storylines interweave to form together and create a chaotic scenario similar to a Shakespearean comedy but with a bit more absurdity and border-pushing. Because of the serious topics that are covered including eating disorders and mental health, a full list of trigger warnings will be provided upon request.
Sam Pianello/The Miscellany News
“The Food Chain,” by Nicky Silver, explores serious topics through comedy. Director Ari Sacristan Benjet hopes the show’s take on these topics will lighten up the sometimes serious culture on campus.
Despite there being so much chaos in the show, the stage design has taken the opposite approach, with Rodarte explaining, “The play focuses a lot on the chemistry between the characters, as well as the idea of a narcissist outlook since each character is, as it’s put in the play, ‘shallow to the point of convex.’ As a result, the design for the show evolved to match that, with a minimalist set design, and a seating arrangement that gives the audience a feeling of looking down into the world of the characters.” “This show will be in the round, which is a fun challenge to work with. It gives the actors the freedom to really treat the space as if it was an actual room, but it is challenging for me to choreograph the movements so that all the audience has something interesting to watch at all times,” Sacristan-Benjet said about how she’s had to alter her directing to conform to the set’s untraditional layout. “The Food Chain” originally premiered Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre in 1995 and ran until June 1996. This original production was eventually nominated for several awards, including receiving an Obie Award, and got very positive reviews from The New York Times and Variety. This comedy has also seen successful productions in San Francisco and Washington D.C., showing that audiences are taking to the idea of finding the funny side of otherwise cringe-worthy subject matter. After first doing a scene from the show in a summer program in high school, Sacristan-Benjet decided to choose “The Food Chain” when determining what to direct: “I really wanted to direct a play that would make people pee their pants in laughter. I felt that at Vassar we always take things too seriously and that a lot of the theatre here tackles issues from a very dark perspective. I wanted to find a play that dealt with important issues that we face at Vassar (like relationships, sexuality and eating disorders) but from a brighter perspective. It is my belief that there is no better medicine than
laughter and sometimes approaching a subject with a new light makes people reflect on it in new ways.” As the only senior in “The Food Chain” Haxton commented on how unique his experience has been: “Before this show, I was only ever in musicals at Vassar so obviously this has had a different feel. It also really helps that this show is a comedy and that every other cast member besides myself is in a comedy group, so we’ve all had some good laughs during the rehearsal process.” Haxton commented on the unique opportunities “The Food Chain” afforded him. “For me, as the show’s only senior, I was excited to get the chance to meet and work with younger actors who I didn’t really know. Every other show I’ve been in here was with people I had worked with before or knew from a social setting. To have a blank slate with the other four actors has been refreshing.” Other productions in Philaletheis’ season for this semester are “4.48 Psychosis” by British playwright Sarah Kane and “Yogurt” by Pirilti Onukar ’16, which will both be going up in the next couple weeks. The organization will also be producing two special events. The Philaletheis Society tends to put on a variety of plays each semester, stretching from conventional to experimental. As serious as we may take ourselves sometimes, being college students, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to take a step back and just laugh at it all. One essay doesn’t mean your entire future and not every petition can change the world. Comedy can be found in the weirdest of places and, when handled with the right conscientiousness, it is possible to laugh at practically anything. Ruminating on what audiences hopefully will extrapolate from the show, Sacristan-Benjet stated, “I hope the audience laughs so hard they wished they had a diaper on and that they find ways to connect with the play on a personal level.”
Radha Pandey to trace history of papermaking in lecture Noah Purdy
Guest Reporter
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Courtesy of Vassar College Media Relations
ommunication is such a ubiquitous part of everyday life. From Snapchatting to texting to, taking notes in class, the written word is not, as some say, dying out. Instead, it is simply taking on new forms. The complexity of our language distinguishes the human race as a species, and so studying how and why we communicate helps probe larger questions about humanity. One fascinating aspect of this quest will be presented in a lecture and demonstration by papermaker and artist Radha Pandey in the Aula on April 11. Pandey specializes in what is known as Islamic-world papermaking. Her lecture at Vassar will focus more specifically on traditional Indian handmade paper, comparing traditions between India and elsewhere in East Asia and explaining the techniques, their effect on literacy and the influence of the British. So what exactly is Islamic-world papermaking? According to Vassar Muslim Student Union President Farah Aziz ’16, paper and text are extremely important in Islam. She explained, “Islam has a special appreciation for the arts with respect to poetry, calligraphy, storytelling, etc.... Calligraphy [especially] is appreciated and respected for its ability to function as both artwork and as a powerful mode of communication.” This tradition is not actually where the story begins, though. As Pandey explained in an emailed statement, “Islamic-world papermaking is the link between papermaking in the East (Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam) and papermaking in the West (Europe and the U.S.).” Papermaking was invented in China in 105 A.D., but ideas traveled west in an unexpected way. “The arrival of papermaking in Samarkand from China,” Pandey continued, “is said to have been the result of Chinese prisoners of war that traded this very important and then obscure knowledge of making paper in exchange for their lives.” Samarkand, in present-day Uzbekistan, was an important city for scholars as well as Silk Road traders, and so the production and use of paper, connected to the traditions so vital to Islam that
Aziz described, flourished there. With time, the innovation spread throughout the Islamic world, hence “Islamic-world” papermaking. However, as Pandey points out, the term can be misleading. “This type of papermaking does not have much to do with Islam as a religious practice, but rather as a cultural phenomenon ... Just as Western papermaking is not called Christian papermaking despite being used in the production of bibles, it is unfair to call this tradition ‘Islamic’ papermaking and have a religious tag affiliated with its definition.” And so, once again, we look to history. The main Islamic invasion of India took place around the 13th century C.E., and along with it came the art of papermaking. About simultaneously, the Islamic powers and their skills in paper crafting were spreading to Spain, and from there, papermaking spread to Europe. “The mechanization of the papermaking process led to what we know today as Western papermaking,” she continued. “This happily coincided with the invention of printing and there was an explosion of literacy and learning.” In India, though, papermaking stuck around, and religious manuscripts thrived alongside printed books for years. Then the British descended. In the West, print material had turned to propaganda, including famous events such as Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses. In India, however, the British undermined traditional handwritten texts, using European-style printed materials for colonial purposes. “The Portuguese brought printing to India in the 1500s, and books in print were seen as evangelical tools.” Pandey continued. “In 1757, when the last opposition to British rule fell in Bengal, the East India Company took hold and print became an indispensable tool in the colonization effort, and was used to serve the new government.” Though Pandey is very knowledgeable about the formal background of papermaking, her interest in the handicraft is also deeply emotional. Her personal history with paper, much like the history of papermaking itself, has roots in East Asia. “When I was about five, and living in Delhi,
Radha Pandey will deliver a lecture on papermaking. The ancient art encompasses social. cultural and economic elements of Islamic history. The art form also has a deep, personal significance for Pandey. my mother came back after a visit to Japan. She brought back a small pack of origami papers for me, and I was hooked ... It wasn’t white, opaque and smooth. It had a texture, fibers. It was translucent ... It was beautiful and I was obsessed,” wrote Pandey. Pandey pursued her passion at various institutions throughout India and the United States, studying and working with everything from traditional papermaking to graphic design to stop-motion animation of wire frames embedded in paper. Associate Professor of Religion and Director of Asian Studies Michael Walsh, who organized Pandey’s visit to Vassar, expressed his departments’ interest in her lecture, saying, “We spend so much of our time with texts. Here is someone who makes paper, the material that texts are made of ... Handicrafts, or any crafts for that matter, can teach us much about the values and aesthetics of another culture. Humans make
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
their world in many respects, quite literally.” Walsh expanded on the reasons for inviting Pandey, explaining, “[H]er perspective on Islamic-world papermaking seemed important given how little there is in our College curriculum on Islam.” The Religion Department, however, is adding an Islam scholar to its faculty in the fall. Pandey’s talk is quite specialized, but it will help broaden our comprehension of seemingly foreign cultures. Just as evolving forms of communication make the world smaller every day, in the end, Pandey hopes to demonstrate how universal papermaking, the original mass form of communication, is. “Papermaking is an important cornerstone in every tradition and culture,” she expressed. “The invention of paper and transmission of that knowledge played a vital role in the way we imbibed and disseminated knowledge and information, and that is relevant today in giving us a better understanding of who we are as a culture and society.”
April 7, 2016
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Impromptu concerts to set stage for Decoda performance Sabrina Oh Reporter
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own. Balliett expressed anticipation in regards to his world premiere. He wrote, in an emailed statement, “My woodwind quartet is also a world premiere, which makes this a very exciting concert for me, and I hope it will be exciting for my colleagues as well—it is always fun to bring a new work to life. I wrote this quartet for wind instruments—oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn—last summer while playing chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont.” The performance will also feature a visual component. Balliett resumed, “The piece presents a series of characters, a kind of parade of dancers, represented by different types of music, although all of the musical material is derived from a very small set of motives. I asked my friend Will Storie, a very young artist whose work I respect immensely, to provide a visual representation
of these characters in his own inimitable style. These drawings will be projected while the quartet performs.” As community is one of Decoda’s chief virtues, the College becomes an ideal platform for Decoda to not only achieve its objective but also share the pillars of its art—experimentality, musicality and performance. According to Balliett, “We will be performing in some non-traditional venues around campus, and visiting a variety of classes—music and non-music alike—during our visit.” He continued, “Decoda’s goals always include providing a high-caliber performance and events that serve the surrounding community. Coming to Vassar is especially satisfying because the school is very welcoming, and gives us the opportunity to interact with a wider band of the school population than just the concert-going audience.”
Courtesy of Vassar Music Department
e on the lookout for a roaming bassoon!” wrote Concert Administrator Amy Kawa of the Department of Music at Vassar College. Kawa’s caveat is not to be taken lightly. The Department of Music presents Decoda, the first ever Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall. Based in New York City, Decoda will perform on Saturday, April 9 at Vassar and also complete a three-day residency on campus later this week. Decoda is a chamber ensemble dedicated to experimental performances and captivating projects. The group is a prestigious one—performing at Carnegie Hall and beyond. Their initiative has taken them to the global stage of performance art. Decoda has traveled to Abu Dhabi, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Denmark. Decoda is rooted in the more unassuming of virtues—education and community. They have shared these virtues on a variety of stages, including schools, hospitals and prisons. Kawa expressed enthusiasm on behalf of the Department. “The music department is thrilled that Decoda will be returning for another threeday residency at Vassar from Thursday, April 7 through Saturday, April 9,” wrote Kawa. She wrote, “Last year’s visit was a great success with Decoda coaching and performing not only in Skinner Hall, but all across campus.” Professor of Music Eduardo Navega expressed similar sentiments. He wrote, “Last year the Decoda came to Vassar for a three-day residency and a concert and it was such a success that we decided to have them back this year. They are a vibrant group of young musicians and their performances are of a very high level. They will be coaching all of our chamber groups. As they did last year, they will be doing short surprise performances all over campus to invite people to the concert on Saturday night.” Kawa offered a brief glimpse into the concert’s content. Kawa noted, “Among other works, the concert will feature pieces by two of the Decoda
musicians–Nathan Schram and Brad Balliett–and a world premiere of a Duo for bassoon and clarinet by our own faculty member Richard Wilson.” According to Kawa, the group will be quite busy on campus. She wrote, “This year they will be coaching our chamber music students, reading some original student compositions, giving several pop-up performances on campus in previously unannounced locations, and performing a final formal concert in Skinner Hall on Saturday evening.” This, indeed, includes roaming bassoonist Brad Balliett. Balliett is a bassoonist and composer based in New York City, most notable for his innovative and scintillating performances and compositions. He is also the principal bassoon of the Princeton Symphony, was formerly the acting principal of the Hartford Symphony and has appeared as principal bassoon with the American Ballet Theater and Houston Symphony. Balliett will perform alongside fellow Decoda member Nathan Schram. Additionally, Balliett will be performing Professor of Music Richard Wilson’s “Reed Actions,” a world premiere of a duo for bassoon and clarinet. Balliett spoke about his thoughts on the premiere piece and the preparatory aspect of the process, by and large. Balliett wrote, “Preparing this program has been particularly exciting for Decoda, because it involves a number of pieces which we have never played before, including the premiere of Vassar composition faculty Richard Wilson’s Reed Actions for clarinet and bassoon.” He continued, “Since this performance will be the world premiere, of course we have never worked on it for previous concerts. The piece is quirky, entertaining and impeccably crafted, but also quite challenging. Our strategy has been to go over each section very slowly and work it up to the proper speed over many repeated iterations. In this way, we hope to give a performance that is both perfectly accurate but also full of life and musical depth.” Interestingly, Balliett will perform yet another world premiere: a woodwind quartet of his
The celebrated Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, Decoda is set to perform on campus. Before their main concert, they will play a number of spontaneous shows around campus to drum up excitement.
Russian classic, Vassar oldie reborn in Martel Theater Elena Schulz Reporter
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seeing a set of relationships, and some of the nuanced ways that those people communicate with each other.” Having studied the complexities of Chekhov’s writing firsthand, Zerphy brought back a sense of authenticity to this production of “The Cherry Orchard.” “I studied at the Moscow Art Theatre, which is where Chekhov’s plays were produced,” she explained. “It was founded by Stanislavsky, who was friends with Chekhov,” Zerphy continued. Her experience in Moscow was invaluable to the production. She mentioned, “While I was in Russia, we also studied Russian folk dancing,” which was the basis for the choreography of a jubilant dance number in Act III. “The Cherry Orchard” will be authentic not only in dance, but in music as well. Live musicians from the Hudson Valley band, Caprice Rouge, will be featured onstage as the source of lively klezmer music. Having found a wax cylin-
Courtsey of Vassar College Media Relations
he Cherry Orchard’ is by no means an ‘inanimate thing,’ but one of those living works of art which we do not allow to die,” wrote Professor of English Mary E. Giffin in 1960. In its 12.7.60 issue, The Miscellany News announced the arrival of “The Cherry Orchard” to campus. It was performed as a celebration of the centennial of both Vassar and the birth of Anton Chekhov (“Experimental Theatre Stages Chekov’s ‘Cherry Orchard’”). The article proclaimed, “The Experimental Theatre is to be congratulated upon undertaking the production of a classic so well known that every nuance of its lines has become a subject of literary criticism.” 56 years later, and after 112 years in production, “The Cherry Orchard” endures as an immutably classic work which refuses to die. Written by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and directed by Professor of Drama Chris Grabowski, “The Cherry Orchard” will be performed in the Martel Theater on Thursday, April 7, Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9, beginning at 7:30 each night. According to the Vassar Drama Department website, “The play is about the passing of an era, and portrays the social climate of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, when the aristocrats and land-owning gentry were losing their wealth and revealed themselves to be incapable of coping with their change in status.” Not unlike the United States, Russia had no tangible plan for how its society would evolve post-liberation, and “The Cherry Orchard” captures this societal instability. “Chekhov wrote in this moment, and I think this speaks to us, this moment of incredible disruption,” Grabowski remarked. “For better or for worse everything was changing and people didn’t know what the future was going to look like.” Born in 1860, Chekhov himself was witness to the uncertainty of the time. Grabowski explained, “He was born the year the serfs were freed and he died before the first Russian revolution—so he lives in this incredibly interest-
ing moment, where he doesn’t know how vastly different the future is about to be.” He added, “There’s a sense that the world is changing, and changing fast, like our own world.” While Russia was tentatively stepping into a new era, Chekhov was busy creating the foundation for an entirely new kind of theatre. Assistant Director Olivia Zerphy ’17 commented, “In the play, there are these wonderful little hints of surrealism, like what’s to come in drama, what the next large world movements were.” Chekhov drew from the confusion and uncertainty of the time to set the precedent for theatrical movements, and from this uncertainty he established a newfound sense of nuance not yet common in theatre. “Chekhov didn’t invent subtext, but he perfected it,” Grabowski clarified. “What the characters are saying is only a piece of the truth. They have strong motivations, and really what you’re seeing when you see a Chekhov play isn’t really a plot; you’re
“The Cherry Orchard” is hitting the Vassar stage once again. The production was last performed on campus in 1960. This time, live music will help transport the audience back to Chekhov’s Russia.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
der recording of the Moscow Art Theatre’s first production of “The Cherry Orchard,” Grabowski confirmed that the music would indeed pay homage to the original. “You could hear the music in the background, and though the script suggested that it was sort of European, it definitely sounded Russian. That was an exciting discovery,” he said. Ensemble Guest Matt Stein ’18 [Full Disclosure: Matt Stein is a Reporter for The Miscellany News] commented on the dynamic live music brings to the show. He explained, “We rehearsed to a recording and now that we have a live band, it adds an element of realism to the show. This is what Chekhov originally had in mind with his characters, so it brings the show that much closer to the real thing.” He continued, “The intermission actually ends with the band proceeding through the aisles onto stage before the curtain rises. It signals the start and it’s also a fun way for the show to enter the audience’s world, breaking the fourth wall.” From the intricacies of klezmer music to ensemble size, Grabowski paid special attention to the most historically overlooked aspects of “The Cherry Orchard”—and it shows. Kaitlin Prado ’19 emphasized her appreciation for the incorporation of a bigger ensemble than those of many productions, which feature a pareddown cast of primarily lead characters. “I feel like this was a very nice gesture to incorporate some talented underclassmen, because not everyone can have a lead obviously, but I think so many people have lots of talent and this is a way to incorporate them,” she said. 112 years since its debut, “The Cherry Orchard” continues to captivate audiences and actors alike. “It’s a very well-written play and we just have such a good group of people,” Prado remarked. “I’ve read the play way too many times by now and I’ve seen it over and over again, and I’m still taken in these certain moments that have been created as we’ve put everything together. It’s so beautiful every time and I can only imagine what it’s going to be like for an audience sitting in the dark seeing it for the first time.”
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April 7, 2016
Loeb caters to Disjointed new RJD2 album disappoints art experts, newbies alike Jimmy Christon Columnist
Dame Fortune RJD2 Definitive Jux
LOEB continued from page 1
founder of Slow Art Day, Phil Terry, experimented with slowly looking at art by spending hours looking at only Hans Hoffman’s “Fantasia” and Pollock’s “Convergence” at The Jewish Museum. The next year, Terry brought other participants to do the same thing at the Museum of Modern Art. As time went by, more and more galleries and museums got involved and it went from one man and one museum to over 200 venues in 2015. This year, there are 159 Slow Art Day venues around the world and counting. These include a large diversity of places, whether they be museums, galleries or institutes. These include the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and Gallerie dell’ Accademia in Venice, Italy. Each place is encouraged to interpret the logistics widely and creatively so every participant is given a unique experience. The event will take place on Saturday, April 9 at 11:30 a.m. Now, how does one look at art slowly? The goal is to focus on the art and the art of seeing by taking the time to look at four different works of art representing distinct periods and styles for 10 minutes each. Loeb Multimedia Assistant Delphine Douglas ’18 enjoys this setup. She said, “There’s no discussion until after, so there isn’t any pressure to know or understand anything. It’s really about taking time to interact with art in a no-pressure environment.” Studies have actually taken place based on this idea, which have found that people that have more time to look at something have a more ingrained idea of what they saw. Like the fast-paced world around us, so many factors encourage us to move at a fast speed through life, but taking the time to actually look at and appreciate art provides new layers of revelation and ways of seeing. After observing the four works, everyone will come together and have a conversation about their own discoveries. Certain types of art inspire you to spend more time on them. Even the most straightforward painting reveals perspective the longer one looks at it. Vetare explained, “Our own reactions take time to cook, like adjusting to the night sky. It takes time before one is actually able to see, but then instead of darkness layers and pictures appear in front of a person, which is parallel to the experience at Slow Art Day.” Looking at art slowly creates more layers, which paints one’s visual environment. The Loeb workers tried this out before hosting the event and reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Douglas said, “I appreciated the chance to be personal with the art and come to my own conclusions because I was given the time and space to do so.” When people go to a museum for a program or a tour, there is an expectation that the expert tells the visitor about the art and its significance. Slow Art Day goes against this idea. You don’t need an expert to look at art, because there is no correct judgment on a given work. Every visitor brings something different. You are led not by someone but your own visual experience. In addition to its visual benefits, the event is an all-volunteer effort, reflecting the amount of interest in the type of occasion. Slow Art Day also is also exciting for student workers at the Loeb. Docent at the Loeb Josh Schwartz ’18, likes that the event supports the idea of looking at art more meaningfully and purposefully. Schwartz says, “The conventions of the museum have made it increasingly easy for visitors to pass through hundreds of paintings, only glancing briefly at each, trying to acquire breadth and not depth. Slow Art Day seeks to undo that and provide people with an intimate experience with art, to look at it more deeply and to come closer to understanding it.” Vetare has high hopes for the event and its lasting impression on participants. She mused, “We hope people bring their experience in this one day of programming into their future encounters with art. Do this one thing for ten minutes, and I think people will be happily surprised at the depth of their experience.” On the event’s website, a quote by Henry David Thoreau sums up the ideas behind the program: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
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veryday I wake up with a question burning inside my head that I wish I could scream from the mountaintops. It’s a question that has kept me up many nights, and I feel as if I answer it, the world will become a brighter place. The question is as follows: “How come music that blends jazz, hip-hop, and electronic genres hasn’t become more popular?” Sure, you have some success stories like jazz/hiphop fusions such as A Tribe Called Quest or Madlib’s Shades of Blue, but more often than not, musical acts that mix these genres are often sidelined into their own weird genre (see trip-hop) and are very rarely given the widespread recognition they deserve for just how innovative they are within these genres. But for every innovator in a field, you get twice as many failures. RJD2 and his new album is more of a failure than it is an innovation. RJD2 is a Eugene, OR-born Columbus, OHraised musical producer who is probably most well known for his song “Ghostwriter” and for the music for the intro to “Mad Men.” I know I can’t be the only one who is constantly perplexed by RJD2’s musical genre. His early album “Dead Ringer” was a cool, jazzy and mostly-instrumental album that took obvious influences from DJ Shadow, but was done well enough to separate himself from the many DJ Shadow impersonators. My favorite part of the album was how unpredictable it was; you might have one instrumental track that was jazz, another that was borderline plunderphonics and then sprinkled throughout the album you’d have guest rappers randomly showing up. Unfortunately, RJD2’s music has lost this un-
predictably and has mutated into a jack-of-alltrades-master-of-none style. Never residing in a single genre for too long and never mixing genres enough to be a unique fusion of genres, RJD2’s “Dame Fortune” is more of a on/off switch of genres instead of a dimmer-switch. Fortunately for us, this new album “Dame Fortune” might be RJD2’s most musically consistent album to date. Unfortunately for us, musically consistent for RJD2 means only switching between two genres instead of switching between three or four. Labeling “Dame Fortune” by the genres it dabbles is like defining a buffet meal by a single type of food. You got your barbecue chicken, lo mein noodles and then the always ubiquitous mac n’ cheese and pizza to round it all out. That’s similar to what’s happening on this album here. You got your guitar solos on the song “The Roaming Hoard,” your big-band/ marching-band piece on “The Sheboygan Left,” and then your decidedly electronic intro/outro tracks “The Portal Inward” and “The Portal Outward.” This isn’t just cherry picking for the sake of this review. Every song from this album is decidedly different from the one before it. Now sometimes this works on an album with a unifying theme that combines disparate elements. Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” did this wonderfully, but “Dame Fortune” doesn’t have any such thing. The album doesn’t feel so much like an album from a single artist, but it sounds like I am listening to my iTunes library randomly shuffling through my collection of music. “Dame Fortune” also suffers from not being particularly well-versed in the genres it dabbles in. Sure RJD2 might go from plunderphonics-ish “A New Theory” to hip-hop on “Up in the Clouds” in the span of 20 minutes, but one of those songs sounds like an Avalanche B-Bside and the other sounds like an overly serious rap track with verses from MC Blueprint who is trying his absolute best to sound like the
“Great Value” version of RZA. “Up in the Clouds” also represents the other problem with this buckshot approach to style on this album. You very quickly go from something pretty abstract on the previous track “Your Nostalgic Heart and Lung”—a lyricless journey into some vaguely “Tron”-inspired soundscape—to a shitty inspirational hip-hop track about someone waking up from a coma and learning to walk again. The juxtaposition is jarring, and it would probably be considered parody if this were a Weird Al album. While on the topic of “Your Nostalgic Heart and Lung,” I’m seriously very confused as to who this song is talking about (is it a random fan? A person I should know about? Or just complete fiction?) and why I should care about this story when this album has completely avoided any sort of story-telling or narrative previously on this album. Now with most album reviews, I can normally justify a score or a recommendation by saying, “Sure it might not be for everyone, but if you’re a fan of this type of music, you’ll find stuff to like on this album,” but with “Dame Fortune” I’m not entirely sure who this album is meant for. There’s not enough electronic music to say that electronic fans will like it, there isn’t enough rock on it to call it a very soft-rock album either, and there certainly isn’t enough hip-hop on here to be considered a hip-hop album. Any fan of RJD2’s music is going to listen to this album regardless of what score I give it, so recommending an RJD2 album to only fans of RJD2’s music in a public review is useless. So in a general sense, I’d say avoid spending money on this album. There are some good tracks on here like “Peace of What,” “We Come Alive” and “Your Nostalgic Heart and Lung,” but not enough to warrant a buy. For the majority of the runtime, this album comes off as unfocused, scatterbrained and pretty generic. And what’s worse, I guarantee you’ll forget about this album as soon as you listen to something else.
Sell/Buy/Date bridges utopia, dystopia Ezekiel Maben
Guest Columnist
Sell/Buy/Date Sarah Jones Carolyn Cantor
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n “Sell/Buy/Date,” Sarah Jones mediates/ ponders present issues and future realities, through an exploration of utopian and dystopian societies. These societies struggle with many issues we currently face: sexism, abuse, prejudice and more. Sarah Jones’ “Sell/Buy/Date” is a brilliant and strange piece of theatre, deeply involved in the past and present, but unabashedly forward looking in its conception. A fascinating piece of dramatic speculative fiction, the play puts the audience in the position of a class in a future university, lectured on the perils of misogyny and gendered violence after an attempt by a student to trade sex for a good grade. To educate students and prevent future “outbreaks of sexism,” this professor, herself the daughter and sister of sex trade survivors, uses a virtual reality software called “Bio-empathetic Resonant Technology” (BERT) to relive the experiences of those affected by the sex trade, and present them to students. The show deals with profound trauma, and many of the stories are deeply tragic, but Jones retains buoyancy throughout. Even the darkest tales are laced with humor, and her impressions are immensely entertaining, at once caricatures and deeper appreciations of the lives behind the stories. Technically, Jones is profoundly talented. Portraying multiple characters can be difficult for any actor, but despite the strain she manages to convey several dozen unique characters with their own voices. College students, drug dealers, prostitutes, sex trade moguls and New Jersey housewives all come to life on the sparse, minimalist canvas of the set. Most of them seem so natural that it is as if any of these voices could be Jones’ everyday voice. An audi-
ence member could close their eyes during any point in the show and realistically imagine that, instead of Jones herself, they are being spoken to by, for instance, a middle-aged Russian male immigrant who owns a Florida brothel or a Midwestern teen working at a Hooters style “Breastaurant.”
“College students, drug dealers, prostitutes, sex trade moguls, and New Jersey housewives all come to life...” Within the frame narrative of the lecture, these stories provide a timeline of the rise of a legalized and unrestricted sex trade within the U.S. that commodified women’s bodies and lead to even unhealthier attitudes about gender then we have today. The frame society of the lecture is utopian, but the America of the 2030s, ’40s and ’50s, where the stories are set, is deeply dystopian. Both visions are deeply realized by Jones’ superb character and environment work, especially that of the far future, where the need for the sex trade was eliminated by an equitable society. When asked at length after the show about the future world she has imagined, Jones responded that she knows everything about it; from what people there eat for breakfast to their attitudes towards gender, race and class. The background work she has put into her vision is not able to always show visibly within less then two hours of performance, but they deepen her piece and its impact as a work of speculative fiction. It is a compelling utopia presented in a work that is focused on many all too present problems. I left the theater wanting to know as much as possible about the egalitarian world she describes. In this, “Sell/Buy/Date” is almost unique. It unabashedly posits a better future in a market of media defined by tragedy and pes-
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simism. This optimism in the face of adversity is refreshing. Less refreshing is the all-too-real dystopia that precedes the utopia. Jones’s characters live in a world of routine abuse of women, massive gulfs in income and a sex trade that, while immensely harmful, has become a banal part of life. The denouement of the piece, in which Jones’s professor character relives her mother’s experience, is heartbreaking in its depiction of a woman harmed by systematic abuse, resilient and hopeful, but at the same time full of despair. Jones is most certainly not in agreement with those who would fully legalize the sex trade, and while the play never fully goes into heavy-handed polemic territory, it is clear that Jones views the sex trade as deeply harmful. She does not have many kind words for those who would normalize the sex trade, though she is willing to convey their arguments to the audience. Decriminalization of the workers themselves is, after much deliberation, proffered as a solution. “Sell/Buy/Date” is not without its failings. The speeding up of the narrative towards the end and the poorly explained nature of the shows Deus ex Machina solution (an epidemic of heart disease amongst men resulting from rampant gender inequality) harm the otherwise compelling nature of the show. Jones has to find a way to her egalitarian far future from her dystopian near one. But she is not quite able to get us convincingly there. Both visions are real and compelling, but the bridge between them is not quite there yet. Jones seems to recognize this. Her performance during the transition from dystopia to utopia is not as strong as the rest of the show. It is as if she is still figuring this out. When the show returns to New York this September, I hope she will have found her way. I intend to see the results, and encourage anyone who enjoys provocative, timely and unabashedly speculative works to see it as well. Info on show: Sarah Jones is a Obie award-winning playwright and actor. “Sell/ Buy/Date” previewed in workshop this January and will be returning to NYC in September.
ARTS
April 7, 2016
Page 17
Degas monotypes on display at MoMA Jillian Elkin Columnist
A Strange New Beauty Edgar Degas MoMA
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very format reveals new opportunities to an artist. Using a range of mediums forces the artist to adjust creative tendencies, take risks and be inspired. Though best known for his paintings of ballerinas, Edgar Degas also crafted sculptures, prints and drawings. The current exhibition, “Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty,” at the Museum of Modern Art highlights Degas’ monotypes. They are on view for the first time in the U.S. in nearly 50 years. The show runs until July 24. Monotyping is a variety of printmaking created by drawing in ink on a metal or glass plate, which is then run through a press. Monotyping was invented in 17th century and grew in popularity during the 20th century. In the mid-1870s, a friend and fellow French artist, Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, introduced Degas to the technique. Degas frequently inked the entire surface of a plate, then used brushes, rags and tools with fine points to create the subtractive image. The process has come to be known as the darkfield technique. With this form, Degas made detailed prints full of lines and subtle patterns to evoke space and movement. Additionally, Degas often applied or wiped away the ink by hand as evinced by leftover fingerprints and palm prints. Viewers can see marks of fingernails as well for fine detail. For some prints, Degas added color with pastels after the monotype dried. Those prints were typically his second or third prints, also know as pulls or ghost prints. These types of prints are created by running the same print through the press a second or third time. These pale ghost prints exemplify Degas’ care and interest in the process of monotyping. The MoMA showcases about 120 rarely displayed monotypes by Degas. Degas made over 300 monotypes. The show makes a strong argument for monotyping’s influence on Degas
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as an artist of many mediums. Monotypes from Lepic and about 60 related paintings, drawings, pastels, sketchbooks and prints from Degas are included in the exhibit as well. Often, Degas used monotyping as a starting point. Then, he would paint the same image with oils on canvas. Experimentation beforehand with monotyping clearly informed Degas’ depictions of paused motion through the subtle or complex contortions of womens’ limbs and/or back. In his monotypes, Degas expanded his artistic sensibility by regularly mixing mediums and broadening his artistic subjects beyond the ones that he’s famous for, dancers and scenes of modern life.
“Each iteration of a ballerina twisted in a unique pose offered something different for the viewer and about the woman.” The exhibit organizes Degas’ work chronologically and by his subjects. His inspirations reflect a looser, less conservative side of this French Impressionist. The exhibit eases the viewer into this collection by showing Degas’ monotypes of modern life. He highlights passersby on bustling city streets, women at leisure and women at work. Often, the faces are blurred, demonstrating Degas’ emphasis on the body’s movement for monotyping work. Reflective of the late-19th century cities benefiting from the recent advent of 24-hour lighting, Degas depicts the city as a constantly moving entity. On small-scale plate, Degas portrays intimate scenes of women paused in motion at the ballet and in brothels. Though there’s questionable voyeurism, Degas used monotypes to create swirls of limbs and smudges of flurry and reflections. Whether his portrayals of the prostitutes in casual, sometimes joyous, sometimes dull and sometimes awkward instances are
respectful humanizations or critical condemnations is unclear and still debated. Even more intimate are the monotypes of female bathers. In all his monotypes of women, his gestural marks offer real-feeling views of the captured moments. Degas shows the women washing and grooming themselves in some of the most contorted, fascinating postures of all the women depicted throughout the exhibit. From the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s, Degas largely focused on the ink-based process. Briefly in the early 1890s, he switched from black printer’s ink to oil paint, which he applied directly to the plates. Following a break of several years and a trip through the Burgundy region of France, he made monotypes of abstract landscapes. These works are colorful and vague, lacking some of the concentrated energy of his other pieces. But they show a dreamlike whimsy and the same attention to detail. Under the pressure of the print, the paints run. Also, Degas’ use of rollers, cloths, fingerprints and coarse wiping add to the sense of artistic discovery. The lack of realism in these prints stands in stark opposition to his earlier pieces depicting urban life. The exhibition concludes with side-by-side comparisons and progressions from monotypes to works of other mediums to demonstrate the strong influence that monotyping had on Degas. The practice of repetition and reworking in a variety of formats benefited his work in drawing and painting. Each iteration of a ballerina twisted in a unique pose offered something different for the viewer and about the woman. Additionally, colorful patterns in the background offer simultaneously subtle and bold contrasts to realistic forms. They show a union between the fantastical atmospheres from his landscapes and his more typical expressions. Monotyping traditionally requires deliberate, careful effort. Meanwhile, Degas focuses on fluid, lively beings. The juxtaposition between the technique required by the medium and the energy from Degas and his subjects makes for intriguing works of art. The MoMA exhibit offers a wide, yet concise overview of Degas’ work in monotyping and his evolution and experimentation as an artist.
A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists
Excuse me, Which superheroes should fight next?
“Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz’ past.” — Sylvan Perlmutter ’19
“Aquaman and another lame one.” — Caitlan Moore ’16
“Maybe not the one that’s invincible...” —Sarah Zimmerman ’16
submit to misc@vassar.edu
“The Baby Looney Tunes vs. Marcia Clark.” — Carinn Candelaria ’18
“Wonder Woman vs. gender stereotypes.” — Rafi Vega del Castillo ’18
“Is Nemo a superhero?” — Cole Fisher ’18
This collage portrays the Triangle Slave Trade and its ramifications for racial identity today. I produced some of the elements, including the photograph and the cloud of smoke, while other pieces were found. With this in mind, I explored what is controllable and uncontrollable in personal histories of non-white peoples, as well as what is knowable and unknowable from different perspectives: looking in on, or looking out from, those histories. Also central is the concept of establishing home. I feel, however, that none of these ideas are fully formed; I use collage to notice connections and educate myself. -Saskia Globig ’19
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Zander Bashaw, Humor & Satire Editor Evelyn Frick, Columnist Ashley Pecorelli, Staff Photographer
SPORTS
Page 18
April 7, 2016
Grit, skill, chemistry equal winning combo for baseball Annie Hsu Reporter
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Brewers towards their goal. Many members of the team are aware of the team’s potential. Strickland noted, “We have a great group of guys this year, we all know how much potential we have.” Hong added, “We have very strong pitching with a more than capable bullpen and a lineup that has few if not any holes in it.” The challenge is to utilize the talent on the team and to persist. Across the team, all agree that the main quality of their game they need to persevere at is the psychological one. Responding to what his team will be working on this season, Coach Martin said, “Playing the game with intensity and passion. Fulfilling individual roles on the field. Rolling with the punches.” Strickland also spoke to this ability to take the good with the bad. He expanded, “Our motto this year is being able to bounce back from ad-
versity. We are going to be the toughest team on the field in every game we play. A lot of games will be won this year by being tough. Persistence is key to the team’s success this season.“ During the year, the team is always working to improve everyday at practice. Baseball has a really long season, so it’s always important to avoid lulls and constantly work towards getting better,” says Johnson. Agreeing with a fellow captain, English also mentions that it is not a game to game but an everyday attitude that will get them to the end goal.“I think the biggest thing for us is consistency. We are as talented as any other team in the league, the most important thing is for us to show up everyday with full effort and focus and perform like we can.” From all members, this squad truly sounds like the team to be on.
Courtesy of Vassar College Athletics
ough. Tight. Talented. The Vassar men’s baseball team has launched into their spring season with the Liberty Leagues in its mind. “We have out-worked everybody during the offseason and we are off to a nice start to show for it,” said senior captain Brooks English. After coming back from a spring break trip to Florida, and having a few games since then, Vassar currently stands at 9-9 overall and 5-3 in the Liberty League. Coming off a very strong season, this year’s squad is defining themselves as a tough competitor out on the field. The team is lead by Coach Jon Martin. Martin, the all-time winningest baseball coach in Vassar history, has been able to construct a program that has not only produced over 30 All-Liberty League selections, but compete in the Liberty League Championship Tournament for the first time in program history. Martin comes with experience of being a collegiate baseball player himself. He takes his expertise and methodologies and funnels it and his passion into the Vassar team. “I’m competitive. I want to win, and it’s important to me that my players feel what it’s like to work and prepare for something you want,“ said Coach Martin, “We will compete with every team we play. We have 40 games scheduled, already having played 18 and we all want to be competitive and have opportunities to win every game.” A key part of the Brewers’ success is the team harmony. This is greatly thanks to the leadership this year. “I love this year’s team because everyone is extremely close. We all love hanging out together, and it makes the season even more enjoyable,” said senior captain Nick Johnson. This sentiment is echoed by many players on the team. “I’d say our team is the closest group of guys on campus, and our team chemistry is really unrivaled,” explained English. This can be attributed to this year’s senior leadership. There are four captains and seven seniors overall using their experience from previous years on
the team to optimize team chemistry. “As one of the captains this year, my job has been very easy. Everyone on the team is driven to improve everyday, and they all understand our goals and what it takes to accomplish these,” said Johnson. Senior pitcher Jonathan Hong added, “We also have great leadership on the team and I think that the chemistry in the dugout and on the field is better than it’s ever been.” Sophomore Eric Strickland noticed the same tightness of the team as an underclassman, saying, “My favorite thing about the team is how close all of the guys are. Everyone on the team always has each others back, which is not true about every team. It is easy to see how much closer of a unit we are compared to the teams we are playing sometimes. I would not want to be out there playing with any other group of guys.” Coach Martin also praised the good nature of his team, continuing: “Our senior class has done a great job leading by example and keeping a loose, but focused atmosphere. The seniors have been part of a successful culture since they’ve been here. Their expectations are high. I look for that entire class to lead this team and reach the bar that we’ve set.” The team is currently focused on getting to Liberty Leagues and is hunkering down for post-season play. On the near future, Johnson said, “Ultimately, we want to win the league, but the first step for that is finishing in the top four and going to playoffs.” As for both a long-term and personal goal, English said, “My only goal for the season is to get back to the liberty league playoffs. As a senior, there would be no better feeling of winning the league in my last season. My freshman and sophomore year we had great runs in the playoffs, and to get back to that point is really the only goal.” Hong is confident in the team mentioning explaining, “Our goal this year is to make it back to the Liberty League playoffs and of my four years here, I think this is the team to win it.” It is a combination of this tremendous chemistry and a plethora of talent that will carry the
Senior captain Nick Johnson has been integral to the Brewers throughout his career. He and the team hold tremendous chemistry that, in addition to their talent, will carry them far this season.
The real Diehl: Men’s VB bolstered by talented rookie VOLLEYBALL continued from page 1
established himself as one of the best high school volleyball players in the state of Missouri. He was named an All-Suburban West selection during his sophomore, junior and senior years as well as being named an All-State MVP selection after his junior year. During that year, he helped lead his school to a State title. He was further recognized as his team’s MVP for his senior year of high school. Diehl finished his time at Lindbergh High having broken two school records for kills per game with an average of 5.9 and for kills per match, with an average of 26 as well. Throughout his high school career he also posted a hitting percentage of .460 and posted 996 kills overall. He was a leader for his team, serving as a captain for his final three season’s of his high school career.
Diehl was not just a standout athlete, but was also a very strong student. In addition to receiving various accolades for his performances on court (both at the school and statewide level), he garnered further recognition for his performance in the classroom. Diehl was awarded All-Academic honors for each of his high school years in addition to graduating as an AP Scholar and an AP Scholar with Honors. In terms of academic direction, Diehl plans on pursuing a major in Biochemistry during his time here at Vassar. Volleyball has been a significant part of Diehl’s life as he began playing volleyball for a very early age. “I’ve played volleyball since third grade [and I’ve] played club since sixth grade for High Performance Volleyball Club,” Diehl said when asked about his time spent playing volleyball prior Vassar. Although, it is no wonder that he has been so
Courtesy of Vassar College Athletics
Freshman George Diehl has had an excellent start to his career capturing two UVC Rookie of the Week awards, switching positions and helping to lead men’s volleyball to the sixth seed of the playoffs.
successful during his volleyball career. Volleyball runs deep in George’s veins as he is not the only member of his family to play the sport, “My parents met playing volleyball,” he added. However, it is still remarkable that he has made such an impact in only the first year of his collegiate career at Vassar. Throughout the course of the rather long season, he has started in 22 out of 29 games. As a result of his strong performances in these games, Diehl picked up a pair of UVC Rookie of the Week mentions. Teammate, junior Christian Lizana, spoke about Diehl’s impact, saying, “I sometimes forget that he’s just a freshman because he fits right in with us upperclassmen so well. He’s a great teammate because he helps with the competitiveness of practices and gets pumped up on the court. There’s a great mix of his light-hearted humor and drive for success. And off the court he is one of the funniest dudes around.” His first recognition from the conference came after contributing solid performances when Vassar faced college of Mt. Saint Vincent, Penn State-Behrend and Bard College late in February. All three contests, in which Diehl played in all but one set, ended in victory for the Brewers. Diehl posted 13 kills across the three matches, while hitting at a clip of .407 (13-2-27). He also contributed to a handful of helpful digs and assists. George earned his second UVC Rookie of the Week mention after a weekend of competition that saw Vassar take down York College, No. 9 Elmira College, and fall in competitive fashion to the No. 1 team in the country in DIII Volleyball, Vassar’s in-state rival, SUNY New Paltz. Diehl was instrumental in all three contests, as he recorded a hitting percentage of .313, recorded 16 kills, and five blocks in the conference matchups against Elmira and New Paltz. The matchup with Elmira College was perhaps the most crucial part of the season, as the victory allowed the Brewers to clinch a spot in the postseason conference tournament. Despite his success, this season has not come without its challenges for Diehl as he has switched to middle. Lizana spoke to the adjustment, explaining, “He’s handled it very well and provided great athleticism and volleyball IQ for us in the middle. He has great court awareness and is much
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more athletic and quick than he looks, and surprises other teams with his fast transition plays.” Junior captain Trey Cimorelli added, “Having a second solid middle to compliment both the offense and defense has been huge for our success and is definitely a large part of why we are having such a successful season.” Coach Wolter explained the intricacies of the position: “George’s main responsibility as the second middle is to block or slow down balls and he ranks sixth in the conference against UVC opponents.” Diehl also ranks 36 in the country for blocks per set. Despite a spectacularly successful season, the Vassar men’s volleyball team members are not willing to rest on their laurels and are very much still hungry. Diehl is certainly no exception. When asked to reflect on how the season played out as well as what he hopes to accomplish in moving forward, the emerging star offered, “I think we’ve had a good season so far with only a couple bad losses against MIT and NYU. My goal is to make it past NYU and probably Stevens in the UVC tournament to make it to the finals.” Notwithstanding how well the team has performed, the main focus appears to be on continuing to perform well for the competition ahead. However, their hopes for continued success will not come easily. The Brewers definitely have their work cut out for them in the UVC tournament. They were labeled as the No. 6 seed in the conference bracket, despite ranking eighth in the country. This may give them a slight advantage as they will hopefully face a lower-ranked team in their earlier rounds. The first opponent that the Brewers will face as they enter the conference tournament will be a tough but familiar one, NYU, currently ranked No. 13 in the country. The last time out against the Violets, Diehl had an efficient day, registering an impressive hitting percentage of .571, the best percentage for any player on either side of the net. Diehl picked up three kills, hit two aces and recorded a trio of digs and blocks in the three-set win for Vassar. Diehl will hope to continue his productive rookie season and recreate his efficient play to help his team notch a second win over NYU in as many weeks, and most importantly, to keep their postseason alive.
SPORTS
April 7, 2016
Page 19
Domestic violence in the Unequal pay for U.S. NFL: How many times? squads overlooked travesty Robin Drummond Guest Columnist
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t’s hard to argue that there is a sporting organization in existence with a reputation worse than that of the National Football League. With the recent emergence of evidence regarding Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE (which is caused by a number of traumatic blows to the head), the number of parents who want their children to play football is lower than ever; just as it should be. There isn’t anything in the world that is worth making an x-ray of your brain look like a slice of Swiss cheese. The sad thing is, what happens to players during the course of the game is one of last things the NFL has to worry about. September of 2015 was the first time an NFL player had not been arrested in over six years. Most of the crimes match up with the trends you see in the general public. The most common arrests among both NFL players and the general public are DUI. However, since the year 2000, 83 NFL players have been arrested on domestic violence charges. That comes out to an arrest rate of an astonishing 55.4 percent. This means that 48 percent of arrests for violent crimes committed by NFL players result from domestic violence, compared to the national average of just 21 percent. The NFL is notoriously bad at properly disciplining its players. Evidence of this became clear when Baltimore Raven’s star running back Ray Rice was suspended just two games for violating the league’s domestic violence policy. Rice and his then-fiancé Janay Palmer were arrested after the two got into an “altercation” in Atlantic City. A few days after the arrest, footage emerged of Rice dragging the limp body of his fiancé out of an elevator. While this may seem like a rather condemning piece of evidence, according to the NFL, it only warrants a two-game suspension. There are 16 games in the regular season. Rice would be back to scoring touchdowns in no time. One would think the Raven’s organization
would be quick to take action and cut ties with someone who represented them so poorly, that was far from the case. Throughout the offseason, both head coach John Harbaugh and general manager Ozzie Newsome defended their player and insisted he was still very much a part of their plans for the upcoming season. It wasn’t until a few months later when a second part of the video emerged that the Ravens and the NFL began to reevaluate their decision. This portion of the footage showed Rice striking Palmer across the face in the elevator and leaving her unconscious on the floor. In a statement addressing the new footage, Commissioner Roger Goodell said, “I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.” In this case, doing better meant changing the two-game suspension to a six-game one for first offense, and a lifetime ban for a second incident. A few days later, the footage of what took place in the elevator was put online for all to see. The Ravens were in a corner. Now that everyone could see the brutality of what Rice did, the franchise had no choice but to release him. But why did it take so long for the correct decision to be made when it should have been made instantaneously? Did it really take complete video evidence to properly discipline someone who knocked his significant other out cold in public? The NFL has a built up an extensive list of problems in the past few years and they need to fix them soon. At the top of that list should be the leagues domestic violence. One player has already been arrested for striking his girlfriend in 2016 and if I had to guess I’d say he won’t be the last. By letting these types of incidences go unpunished the league is sending a message to the public that says they don’t care about what their players do off the field as long as the perform on Sundays. If this doesn’t change, the public may want to reevaluate what we call “America’s Game.”
Desmond Curran Guest Columnist
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eaching headlines this past week, six members of the United States women’s national soccer team have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) for unequal pay compared to their male counterparts. Looking at the cold hard facts, I cannot help but feel some sense of shame. For a country that views itself as an icon for equality for female athletes around the world, it should be embarrassing that our National Soccer Federation does not pay its female athletes the same as it does for the male athletes. When one takes into account the fact that our country prides itself on the passage and enforcement of the Title IX, leading to increased participation and investment in women’s athletics, it seems a bit odd that once these women launch their professional careers
“There are likely hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the United States who also support this movement.” all that “equality” goes out the window. As far as I can tell, there isn’t that much disparity between the popularity of either national team, as compared to our Olympic Basketball teams where the men’s team garners all the attention. And depending on whether the year has an international tournament or not, both teams bring in about equal revenue for the Federation, though the women’s team may actually bring in even more! On top of that, the women’s team is comparatively better than the men’s team. The wom-
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en’s team has won three FIFA Women’s World Cups, making them arguably the greatest program in the world. Comparatively, the men are simply consistent competitors in the FIFA World Cup, but never true contenders for the title. There is simply no meritable argument for not paying these women equally when they are playing in equally competitive circumstances. Why is this decision only happening now? How did this idea not occur to any leaders in the U.S. soccer community after the women’s team won any of their three World Cup titles? Its not as if there is much, if any, disagreement among leaders in the U.S. soccer community on this topic. As an avid fan and supporter of our women’s national team, it is frustrating to see that no person with knowledge of this issue has taken the initiative to address it. Because of that, it is very exciting to see this lawsuit finally be filed and hope for a positive change in the USSF. Since the lawsuit was first filed by Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo, Landon Donovan and Alexi Lalas have joined in as well, calling for an immediate restructuring of the contracts of the women’s national team. Hopefully more voices among the soccer community will also begin to contribute in defense for these women. Even individuals from the outside have voiced their support, most notably presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. On top of that, there are likely hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the United States who also back this movement. I am sure that by the time the chain of events come to their conclusion, the USSF will have taken the appropriate steps to remedy this inequality. That way, by the time the Rio 2016 Olympics come round this summer, we can cheer on our 76130 women’s national team as they compete for gold and are paid just as much as the men.
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April 7, 2016
SAAC, OneLove take steps to combat domestic violence Zach Rippe
Sports Editor
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he OneLove Foundation, an organization designed established in Fall 2010 to raise awareness about domestic violence and relationship violence, has made its mark on Vassar College. The Foundation was created by the Love family in memory of their daughter Yeardley, a University of Virginia (UVA) women’s lacrosse student-athlete who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, a men’s lacrosse player at UVA. OneLove seeks to work with college students across the country to inform young adults about the warning signs of abuse. It hopes to spark communities to work towards actively changing the statistics and realities of modern-day relationship violence. Vice President of the Student Athletic Advisory Council (SAAC), junior Trey Cimorelli, introduced the foundation to SAAC after it was brought to Vassar through the Sexual Assault
and Violence Prevention (SAVP) Office. Cimorelli continued, “One of the interns, [senior] Tatiana Londono, worked directly with the OneLove foundation to collaborate with Vassar. At the end of last semester, the interns at the SAVP office were trained to facilitate the training (myself included as I work there). Through my connection with SAVP and SAAC that is how we got the ball rolling to have SAAC sponsor a OneLove training.” The session was held in Rocky 200 this past Sunday night and was open to the entire student body. The “Escalation Workshop,” led by Cimorelli and SAAC Secretary junior Sophie Arnold, consisted of a 40-minute film that depicted evolving verbal, physical and emotional abuse between a fictional college couple. The group was then broken up into three smaller discussion groups headed by SAVP staff members, CARES listeners and trained SAAC facilitators. Arnold explained the importance of the film
Courtesy of Vassar College Athletics
The OneLove Foundation training session was held in Rocky this Sunday. This and future events will work towards raising awareness for issues of violence and abuse that impact the community.
and the tone it set for the rest of the session, saying, “I think the program’s use of the video was a crucial piece in this training. By watching an abusive relationship play out in the film, it allow[ed] students to have an external medium to discuss, instead of having to speak only from personal experience. To some degree, it depersonalizes the issue–but it also makes it very personal, because it is very easy to imagine similar things happening to those around you, or it can remind you of experiences you may have had in your own life.” Cimorelli noted that while some of the events in the film may not have been as subtle or true to real life events, they would help individuals to begin to think about these types of situations more cautiously. He also hoped that it would help individuals feel more comfortable speaking or reaching out to others who may be in a risky situation, as well as make individuals more aware of resources on and off campus. Simon spoke of the specific importance of this event to the student athlete community in particular. He reiterated, “It gets people thinking about how their day-to-day actions and language affect people and how those choices either challenge or reaffirm violence.” He continued, “I’m not going to speak for the whole student body; but for me and those in my circles/groups/orgs willing to make that next step, I think after these trainings/conversations there needs to be serious reflection on how my groups and myself as an individual can be proactive in ensuring everyone’s safety.” Junior SAAC rep Nathalie Freeman agreed with the sense of community that was built in spite of the film’s dark tone. “I think that this program was really beneficial because it brought together a lot of college kids from different backgrounds and with different levels of experience with abusive relationships and allowed us to experience something together and reflect upon it.” In regards to the discussion, she continued, “It felt like this whole experience was for and
about us, and that we could speak freely and experience our emotions openly without the fear of being judged.” She spoke about her personal experience, explaining how beneficial the program was to her specifically. “I was pleased with how everyone reacted to the film and I think that after this experience I will feel more comfortable talking to others about my experiences and being there for people who might need my help or guidance,” she said. While the OneLove training session was impactful for those involved, SAAC and the student body recognize that this is just an initial step. Cimorelli stated that the next step is to continue to get involved with the foundation itself via the website joinonelove.org to become part of the movement and raise awareness about its message. In addition, he and other participants of the session believe SAAC can work towards doing outreach surrounding a variety of issues including things like sexual assault, bias incidents and drug abuse. Freeman elaborated, “As a group of athletes I think it’s really important (especially at Vassar) that we show how much we care about the safety of our peers and about making the Vassar environment more hospitable for everyone. I think that it’s important for there to be more events where SAAC invites other people (team members, non athletes, faculty, etc.) to our meetings or workshops.” Arnold agreed, mentioning a desire to keep improving SAAC’s programing and continuing to raise awareness across campus, specifically through established events like the MVP team training that occurs each year. It is important for those who attended to speak with friends and encourage future participation and engagement. SAAC’s goal is not to simply educate a small pool of student-athletes, but rather spark a larger, gap-bridging dialogue that pulls students from all aspects of the college. As Simon put it, “I came out of the training feeling more connected to my teammates and the athletic community members who showed. It was great to see people show up and get invested, we just need more.”
Breaking records, upsetting rivals par for Brewers’ course Hanna McGuire Guest Reporter
Women’s Tennis
On March 30 the baseball team traveled to Annandale-On-Hudson to face Bard College in a non-conference game. The men came away with an 8-7 win over the Eagles after scoring four runs in the top of the ninth inning. Junior Brad Kendall walked to force in a run to put Vassar within two then sophomore Eric Strickland grounded out to second base to give the Brewers the ultimate victory. On Friday, April 1, the squad bested Skidmore College 6-4 in both contests of the doubleheader. The men scored six runs in the top of the fourth to eliminate the Thoroughbred 2-0 lead and ultimately give them the win. The subsequent day Vassar and Skidmore faced off again, this time splitting the doubleheader. Skidmore took the first 2-0 while Vassar barely came out on top 6-5 in extra innings. After the weekend’s competition, the Brewers now stand 9-9 overall and 5-3 conference competition. The men will continue Liberty League play in two doubleheaders against Clarkson University on April 9 and 10. Women’s Lacrosse:
Men’s Tennis:
On Sunday April 3, the Vassar men’s tennis team took down Yeshiva University 7-2. Doubles started off strong as No. 2 pair junior Nick Litsky and senior captain Evan Udine quickly defeated Steven Jemal and Charles Saka 8-1. Juniors Juan Felipe Laso and Alexander Luckmann had a more difficult, but still successful match at three, winning 8-6 against Mikey Ozery and Eitan Rudansky. The Brewers won the first three singles matches to capture the victory. Laso handily bested Jemal 6-1, 6-0 at four while freshman No. 5 Jamie Anderson also won by the same score. Not long after, Udine beat Ozery 6-0, 7-5 at three. No. 2 senior captain Daniel Cooper edged out a 6-4, 7-6 (7-0) win against Dmitri Lebedyev, whom he lost to in doubles. With the win, the Brewers now hold a 6-9 record overall and stand 3-2 in league play. The men will hit the road for Massachusetts this coming weekend to take on Massachusetts Institute of Technology on April 8 at 4 p.m. The following day they play Brandeis University at 10 a.m. and Emerson College at 4 p.m.
The Vassar women’s lacrosse team traveled to Danbury to take on Western Connecticut State on March 30 where they bested the Colonials 16-11. Sophomore Storm Sideleau contributed five goals while senior Isabelle Goldstein had three goals and three assists. The Brewers captured another win on April 1 18-11 against Liberty League competitor Bard College. Freshman Emily Hamburger shone with four goals as junior Phoebe Hankins posted a game-high seven points with six assists and a goal. Vassar is now 5-2 overall and 2-0 in conference play. The women face two more Liberty League challengers this weekend at home: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Friday and Skidmore College on Saturday. Men’s Lacrosse:
In its second Liberty League game of the season, the Vassar men’s lacrosse team fell to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 5-17 in an away match on Saturday, April 2. Despite battling early, the men couldn’t match the Engineer’s strong play. Senior Noah Parson earned his 18th goal of the season
Courtesy of Vassar College Athletics
The Vassar women’s tennis team topped rival Skidmore at home on Saturday, April 2 in a nail-biter 5-4 finish. Before the loss, the No. 19 Thoroughbreds boasted 40 straight Liberty League wins. The Brewers went up 2-1 in doubles after junior No. 1 duo Hanna McGuire and Shayna Becker beat All-American team Madie Benn and Michelle Fuca 8-4. New pair senior captain Kelsey Van Noy and freshman Morgane Flournoy won at three as well. The doubles edge carried over in singles as No. 4 sophomore Morgan Fitzgerald cruised past Erica Meno 6-2, 6-2. Although Skidmore tied the score at three-all, Becker’s 6-4, 5-7, 6-3 win at five set No. 6 Flournoy up to clench the match with a 6-2, 6-2 victory. Vassar is now 7-6 overall and 4-1 in conference play. This coming weekend the women will defend their Seven Sister Championship title at home, where they will compete in a round robin tournament with Bryn Mawr College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College and Wellesley College.
Baseball:
Freshman Morgane Flournoy and doubles partner, senior captain Kelsey Van Noy defeated Skidmore’s No. 3 doubles team 8-5 to begin the Brewers upset victory against the Thoroughbreds. while junior Sam Houston-Read notched his 13th. With the loss, the men are 4-4 overall and 1-1 in league play. The men will play at home this week against Drew University on April 5 and Clarkson University on April 9. Women’s Rugby
The women’s squad took on Fordham University this past Saturday in an affair that saw Vassar rest all of its seniors. The match looked to be a challenge as Vassar was missing two junior starters as well. However the lady ruggers triumphed 46-5 in a contest that saw junior scrumhalf Jyen Wong and sophomore wing Alicia Menard-Livingston score two tries a piece as junior flyhalf Mary Margaret McElduff break the record for most conversions in an academic year with 63. Women’s Track:
On April 2 the Vassar women’s track team competed in the seventh annual Ramapo College
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Invitational and broke multiple school records. Freshman Annelise Depman finished third in the long jump finals at 5.05 meters to set a new record while fellow freshman high-jumper Sarah DeBenedictis set another record with a height of 1.38 in the finals to tie for 12th. The women will first travel to Princeton University for competition on April 8 and then to Pomona, NJ for the Stockton Osprey Open the following day. Men’s Track:
The Vassar men’s track team also traveled to Mahwah, NJ on April 2 to participate in the Ramapo College Invitational. Senior Morrie Lam finished ninth in the triple jump finals with a 13.01 time. Fellow senior Taylor Vann also had a strong performance after tying his school record in the high jump with 1.85 meters. The Brewers will compete at Princeton University on April 8 before the Stockton Osprey Open contest the next day.